(New Story): The Immortal Saga 2173 words

Their school day began like one people would remember reading about on the old earth. Kids playing a scrum of sports before the school day starts. The regimine of classes and order. Its not like that on earth anymore, nor in the oldest planets settled in the Commonwealth of Mankind. They like the species of aliens and other creatures use computers to pace and discipline children for the education thats to come. The colonies that are younger allow this wild privilege for a most practical reason. They know that children are the future and if you want the communities to be real and the community of the planet to be real you need to tie them togther here. In Lathean, a mid tier city on the planet Aedan, they centered their community on the public square. Schools, Government Buildings, Libraries, Churches, museaums, and other buildings such as that all find their home along the edge of Lanthean square. Big public rallies and events are held in the square and children play their rudementary sports there. The problem is children playing sports in the square aren't always playing under some fundemental rule or principle of a leauge. Usually there is a way for kids to sort out these sort of disputes but this day the children don't find any such disputes resolved. "Look the kids are over there playing tennis, ask them to leave they've been here an hour" a young man wearing his pads and holding his helmet points in the direction of the kids playing badmitten, and not tennis. "Handball isn't football anyway" evokes the leader of the soccer mob to which Athyn shakes her head "Are you 12 or just stupid?" She remarks wondering why she got herself into this. He quickly retorts "I am 8." she sighs at this revelation more and pushes foward. "Look, we have 15 minutes left before we have to head back for our classes. You primary and middle school students have another hour before your classes. Don't be senseless children and let us finish our game." The football children scream out in agreement with a mighty yalp worthy of some mongol horde. The kids however are unable to come to agreement with the young adults. But the dispute is able to be resolved by the high school lacross team coming in. Central Lanthean High School needs their team practice to start and this is their first class. The children are many things but not one to get in the way of a teacher doing his job. Thomas Sabato was not a man of much imagination which was why he became a school administrator. His job is to manage the children so they achieve the educational outcomes their parents, city, and colony will need while making those outcomes agreeable to the children themselves. He has to manage the teachers expectations of pay and work conditions so they work to their maxim without bankrupting the school. And all the while he has to deepen the ties and traditions of the school. So when this generation of students come to replace him the ideas he has helped build will become part of the ties binding the colony togther. Like his father before him Thomas was a believer in the virtues of the colony. And like most colonial men he has never seen a commonwealth government agent in his entire life. But this was the day was the day which broke his long streak. His AI buzzed him. "Thomas" The AI spoke in a voice like a sexually idealized version of his wife "We have agents of the Genome here to see you." A man walked in a white tunick and pants with a long black jacket. The man had a completely shaven head. He was joined by a woman with a very tight cut of hair in a similar attire. They both flashed their badges. "I am agent Dane, this is agent Zala" the male agent spoke designating his senior status. With the predominence of Psionic traits in the X chromosone a male senior agent was a unusual scene. "Do you have a moment to pencil us in?" Thomas grimaced a little bit. He did that in part because he knew his Ai told him that he had the time. "Agents? How may I be of service to you today?" Agent Dane pulled out a think data pad "Under General Order 2 of the Commonwealth of Humanity I am conscripting your full and total cooperation." The Commonwealth of man was something of a misnomer in scope. It was a confederacy of planets that worked togther on mutual issues with the ultimate issues being resolved commonwealth wide under a list of general orders, constitutions, and laws of the Commonwealth. General Order #1 was about preservation of the human species and its right to exist. General Order #2 focused on the existance of psychics and their regulation by the state. This is the second oldest part of the commonwealth's government which predates its formation. Thomas knew the consequences of his not cooperating. "I see, and what do you agents need of me?" This was going to move several of his scheduales off kilter. Thomas was not pleased by this at all and viewed this mean from the commonwealth as a burden to his work in building the colony. But he would rather not be held in one of the many prisons the genome has the right to manage people who violate general order #2. "We are doing a data pull and it won't take long. I will when its done need some students pulled from their classes and need your school nurse to work the blood machines for me. That way we ensure the process is fair and transperent." Administrator Sabato nodded knowing the stories of the Genome and its overzealousness in selecting some people that lead to horrific mistakes. Athyn had a deep distate for Galactic History class, but it was one that many human students hated. "The Council came to start their era of peace and civility about 6000 years ago by our reckoning of calanders. Or as we would know it the dawn of recorded human history. In a central battle that defined the founding of the council that was key to preserving the council who were the 300 Spartans?" One of the students raised his hand but the teacher called on Athyn she spoke without acknowledging him "The 36 Immortals." The teacher smiled. "Correct. Which is why the Council while largely devoid of the powers of government grants under Section 36 of the Council Accords, signed by humanity after the first contact war, the right to have 36 special agents with broad powers to act in the name of the council for broad issues of galactic order." The student who raised his hand continued with a proud and unauthorized boast. "Lt. Col. Hawk was the first human to join the Immortals." the students laughed and the teacher turned his face on the eager student. "Thats not even history yet, thats just an old current event." The other students laughed. Athyn saw a flash across her screen. She eyed it and tried to ignore it but her teacher being a cyborg with a stickler for duty had other ideas. "Athyn we can pretend my implant didn't see it or you can make it to the confrence room double time missy." She got up but was not going to make her way their double time. She wondered what was sufficent to yank the chain on the principal to call her in like that. Athyn was a good student, but not a great student at the school. She was in clubs and even in some authorized school activities but nothing to stand out in her record at the school. She took pride in not standing out from the crowd. She also when she wasn't at school would hang about her family homestead to much. She was viewed as antisocial by most of the true believers on the colony but she didn't care much about that nor did her folks. The colony was divided between the true believers who represent the old families on the colony and those who have a passion for the colonization and the people from the later waves. Athyn's family came in the 3rd wave and they tended to settle a planet when it was civil enough and left when it got to civilized and advanced. One of the students in the Lacross team joined her. Tyrus wasa large young man built with a almost mythological purportions worthy of Hercules or thor. His curly main of blonde hair even evoked a bit of the mythological thor. His family was old colony and some people said they were exposed to the planets gravity longer so they have mutated differently. Athyn was a farmer's daughter who was thin and well proportioned as one would expect a 16 year old to be. Her red hair and grey eyes stood out as two of the common mutations found here on Aedan which made those traits more common then they should be. She is wearing a basic tunic and pants with a tri-weave in a floral pixel color. He was wearing a jump suit for his engineering and mechanics class. "So get yanked out of your class for no reason to Athyn?" He said to her knowing it was most likely so. She tied her hair behind her and nodded. "So what did you do this time Tyrus?" Tyrus was usually the type to have done something. "I don't know, I do a whole lot of things around here that would get me in trouble and you do all most nothing at all." he laughed and beat his chest "So you have to ask yourself, what did you do to be as much of a bad guy as me?" His laughter helped relieve her tensions. But she couldn't help but feel a sense of dread as she and Tyrus met a few other students being called at what seemed like random to the same confrence room. 'That which seems random, rarely is random when government is involved.' was an old axion of her Grandfather's that her father was known to repeat. She wondered on the truth of the axion right now as she marched into the unknown with her fellow students. The VI greeted her and the students. It took the form of a tall 20 year old human female. Her hair was green to give off one of the many subbtle abnormalities VI's had to make humans feel more comfortable with them. The Hologram opened up her hands. "We can dispense you some food and maybe even some beverages. We have almost confirmed everyone is here so we have time for snack and drink orders." The students mostly complied with the request and began the process of trying to normalize the abnormal. Meetings at this school and classes were to well organized and to well reasoned. Administrator Sabato was a man who loved his efficency a little to much and the students had an expectation this meeting couldn't meet. Athyn however had a feeling growing in the pit of her stomach and it was growing stronger and blacker. Tyrus felt the same pain in his guts and into the depths of his person. They couldn't place the source of their bad feeling but they both looked in each others eyes and saw the feeling was shared. Agents Dane and Zala entered with the school nurse. None of the other students knew what was going on but Athyn but she grew 30 shades of pale. When Agent Dane saw her he whispered something to the school nurse before he addressed the students in the confrence room. He eyeballed the faces of the students and Athyn gave off the most obvious reaction. One Agent Dane was planning to use when he needed it. "Most of you don't know what I am, and none of you know me. My name is Agent Dane and I am a member of the Psi-Corp of the Psionic Genome. As part of general order 2 we are a policing force for wild psionics and we have reason to believe that some one in this school is a pre-active psionic. We have the ability to catch them now and refocus them into the Genome and into things like Psi-Corp where their gifts will become a tool for the betterment of mankind and the commonwealth." He was waiting for Athyn to react but she didn't. If he wasn't working this would have made him smile. She was on the red list so far as Aeden is concerned but she was being remarkably civil and calm about all of this. He would have time later to ask her about all of this before moving forward. This provided a prolonged pause in his presentation. He let the pause go a bit longer before he went to ask questions from the audience.

2012 NaNo day 2

Paragon: 2012 NaNoWriMo Entry By Larry Bernard People think of space as liberating, but instead of being liberated by the silence your liberated by the activity. One small step for man one giant leap for mankind. For Cassie Stryker all this was in a round about way was one Giant Leap. Small pieces of debris both natural and unnatural wiz by your head. But when you can take a shotgun shell to the face with a smile you would be surprised how little space debris concerns a person. All sorts of radiation and energy flows in the space above our world. For Cassandra she is able to channel and redirect this energy toward the project she is working on. Cassandra Stryker used to think of space in such a sense of a calm emptiness until she became the Incredible Dynamic Woman. But then truth be told she had a problem with emptiness in her life before her change. Now her life is full of energy and adventure. She has a fullness that is apt to overflow even here in the cold void of space. Her costume comprised of a golden cape and a deep rich evergreen body. Trimmed with a white Belt, glove, and boots. On her Chest is a golden D. The D was not native to the costume but she added it once her new name stuck. Her long Auburn hair floated in the zero gravity she was experiencing in earth orbit. Her face is concealed behind a mask but her piercing gray eyes were focused on her task. The mask also covers most of her face but leaves a place for her hair to flow. Like the D it wasn't something the costume first did but she taught the costume how to make the mask. The costume is tied to the source of her powers and it reacts to her wishes at an almost instinctive and subconscious level. She started out small as a hero. Back then she was just known as “The Blur” but 10 years ago terrorists took out the twin towers and Dynamic Woman burst onto the stage and her life stopped being easy to manage. Other people in costumes came out. Most of them were people pushing the upper end of Olympic athleticism but a few of them have powers. Sadly more then a few were pudgy nerds and neck-bearded geeks who ended up getting beaten senseless. Police departments around the world took an eye to hassle the pousers and take a serious hands off approach to the ones who could handle it. This approach to the empowered and the costumed community always bothered cassie a little. Though those with powers all came a few years after Cassie hit the scene and many of them were attempts by Governments to make super powers with genetic engineering. Then came the Nationwide tv show which made life almost impossible to manage. Some how cutting back from doing a Radio Show and a TV show didn't help. She decided to do a national political movement and do conferences around the country to call people to be heroes in their own lives, and heroes without the costumes. She kept putting the chaos on top of chaos in her own life and really didn't have anyone to blame.Which makes the peace of the chaos of space and doing advanced electronics work much more satisfying. The debris that on earth exists deep underground as a mark of our civilization. But our civilization is touching the sky and as such here lie our artifacts. She didn't even pay attention as her cape bumped smaller debris away from her work. Taking the smaller bits of debris and breaking them up into a finer field of debris. The cape expands and undulates as an organic being. Why the Depatment of Defense trusted some one with a B.A in music theory to do advanced electronics work she will never know. She ponders to herself 'I wonder if this would make a good show topic.' She smiled as the notion came in her imagination. You can die, or you can make something explode. There was something peaceful in that simplicity. No trying to balance human drama or politics, not trying to fend off or balance corporate contracts, just do or explode. But the truth be told she wasn't sure if she could die anymore. And she truly wasn't in a hurry to find out if she could or couldn't. And she was even less willing to find out while blowing up a multimillion dollar communications satellite either. Her eyes were able to see circuits better then the eyes of most men and her powers allowed her to connect micro-circuitry in a way most people or even machines wouldn't be able to do even if they had a space shuttle to take them up here. 'Thankfully we have superheros who can do the job and not hold our national security hostage to russia.' she placed the idea on the back burner for later. If this mission was ever declassified. Her two jobs were more and more feeling at cross purposes even though their was a high degree of synergy with them. She also had an even more important job as a wife and mother that put in a third layer of conflict. But all of that is for after connecting the circuits and terminals to their new home. She is floating in space attached to a Satellite for the Sirius Satellite network. While working on the satellite she uses her power of cyberlink to attach herself to a voip teleconference at her office. “So where are we on verifying everything for the Show on Stalo?” She voices over to her production staff. The show on Billionare Alexi Stalo had been in the works for years. It was the White Whale that the production team has had meeting and meetings about meetings over. The team worked like demons to get the story ready to go to Cassie's legal team. Cassies legal team cleared the story to go to the network. After the network news end signed off then it went to the networks legal team. The Networks legal team had kicked it back 3 or 4 times now. Cassandra Stryker isn't gifted with being just famous in one world, but hosts the #1 rated 6-7pm News show in the country on the Veritax network. That combined with her loving husband and children put her in the Trifecta. She did have it all and she probably had to flip a coin over her heroic life and her tv show as to which rea ched more people. She was not just blessed with a triple role but with being so fulfilled in all three of those roles. In that respect the hard work it took to balance the three and do the three was always something that made it worth it. In her capacity of a Television Show host she would find herself crossing swords like men of the type as Alexi Stalo. Alexi Stalo is a billionaire, and would likely be one of the richest men in the world if not for his charitable and political philanthropy. “Cassie “ Lou, her Executive producer spoke up “ We are still fighting with Veritax Legal over this. And the front office is still not so sure about this show.” Lou held a special place in Cassie's heart. She was his best friend and he hers. They both got started in the music end of Radio around the same time. They both ended up ruining everything with addiction around the same time, and when she got her powers he was the first person she told. Because she knew she couldn't keep this a secret from the people closest from her. She understood it would be best to keep it a secret from the world but she couldn't lie to the people closest to her anymore. He has ever since that point tried to keep Cassie grounded. Something thats hard to do when he is in their New york City office and she is busy in earth orbit. The very thought of that always made her smile. His efforts to ground her have become more and more difficult for him. The show moving to Cable took her from being a marginal pop culture figure to being one that clashed swords with the President. The fact that the President set up not one but several staffers to deal with her role as a media figure was something he took with even helpings of alarm and pride. They got a senior staffer to the President to resign under the heat of the relentless questioning they provided. Lou loved the good news and journalism she provided to the cause but more and more he wondered if his Friend had made enemies she wasn't able to deal with. People talked about Cassie on late night tv and hardly with the same favorable light they spoke about Dynamic Woman in the same show. She sighed in space. Trying to deal with complex legal and broadcast journalism efforts proved more distracting then she had initially imagined it would be. Worse then that in the process of her career in Radio and then later TV went up Cassie did books and other things. She was now a millionaire several times over. She could buy the station that fired her from her last job in FM music radio and run it anyway she wanted to now. She had that kind of money in her bank account. But she still was frugal with her money and had to become more and more inventive with lawyers to protect it. More and more the legal protections took into account the risk of potential exposure of her second job. Or at a minimum it was more distracting then it would be if she wasn't busy being Dynamic Woman and trying to wire something into new circuits of the satellite. The risk of blowing up millions of dollars of vital space infrastructure does a great job of focusing ones mind. She closes her eyes for a split second. A AIM window pops up on her home computer. “Are you at home, or do I want to know where you are?” Lou sends a message to her. She smiles wickedly and sends a response back. “I am floating above Tbilisi right about now I think.....I am in outer space, how cool is that?” Lou see's the ping come back before she responds to the teleconfrence. “Lou I get we need to get absent of malice and all that other stuff nailed down. And I know at the end of the year we are going into contract negotiation but can you and Hiram subtly suggest to them that if we are going to extend our contract, we might not be so motivated if we have to much of a heavy hand of editorial interference from the network. Baron promised me we wouldn't have any of that.” Lou quickly cut in with an IM “Oh I see, your going into outer space to skip out on a meeting. I see what you did there.” Baron Michael Fitzwallace, another of the worlds richest men and the owner of the Veritax group of broadcast and media entities. Baron grew up in Rhodesia but then relocated to South Africa. After that he relocated to Hong Kong and finally Australia where he began to assemble his global media empire. There were few corners of the world where Veritax had no reach. His shaved head and eye-patch made him look like a pirate or a James bond Villain. He even was a fan of white persian cats as well. Though his latest was a Siamese mix. “Baron” as he liked to be called personally recruited Cassie to bring her show onto his network. He decided to challenge the perception in the states of a 'Left Wing Media Complex' which proved to make him a public figure of notable scorn. Of course this challenge made him a ton of money, as most of the challenge he always took on did. Especially with his quirky desire to call himself Baron all the time. But Baron and the rest of the staff of the network have become touchy of late. He endorsed one of the Democrats in the election. The wife of former president Blythe who was Senator from California. Diane Blythe didn't win but Senator Craver decided to make her the first female Defense Secretary. Which makes Cassie's work more amusing in context. The conflicts with President Craver and his staff have lead to a lot of push back with the advertisers. The boycotts were of disputable effectiveness. Cassie's team talked with the networks marketing team about alternative modes of financing. This was part of the tensions that have been growing between Cassie and Veritax.Which made it somewhat amusing that because of Craver's cutting off the space program and scaling back the capacities of Nasa she now had an opportunity to Nerd out while working on a satellite. Cassie liked Veritax and liked the freedom it gave her but she and her staff have been exploring other options. The problems of course were deeper as the attempts of Dynamic Woman to have a larger footprint on the broader world were boxed in by the 6-7 slot. More often then not Cassie had to use some kind of shenanigans to participate in the show prep meetings. And the shenanigans were becoming more and more elaborate. Cassie had a power which allowed her to access data on computers. She was even able to take in data input from computers. This was the first time she was able to use it to manipulate data inside the computer. She wasn't going to give Lou the satisfaction of knowing she was nerding out at the ability to log into her home computer with Go-To-Meeting. Lou's AIM popped up again. “I am working on a satellite for the DoD. How funny is that.” Lou looked at the words cockeyed. “DoD? But your on a private satellite?” The words typed by no hands came back “Isn't crony capitalism grand? And best of all this has a public service as well as military application.” Lou made a mental note that he needed to talk to Cassie about this some more when she came back down to earth. But he was going to be in meetings about meetings to plan how to have a pre meeting about meetings. Lou scribbled on the note pad “please god shoot me now.” Cassie popped up on the screen on AIM again. “I have an idea for a new go-to-meeting commercial. “Dynamic Woman uses Go-To-Meeting to log into computers from outer space. What o you think?” Lou rubbed the bridge of his nose, never hating his best friend in the world more then this moment right now. Cassie broadcast over to her staff again. “The Rally location, have we nailed down where we want to do it? I think we should shoot to do it in Poland. I think we should do that to show what happens when people are steadfast and stand their ground for freedom. I think we can also contrast that with what happened when people in Poland didn't in their past. “ Matt piped in. “I think if we try to do that kind of branding and messaging we need to find a way to do it that’s more pro-poland. If we focus on that as part of the broader theme.” Charlotte seconded Matt's idea. “Well this will be our second promo so we need to make sure we can get that kind of work together. Put that to Daniel and lets see what we can make happen.” As Cassie was finishing up the last connection and testing it on the computer the image of Alexi Stalo comes onto the screen. His vibrant white hair was deceptive. And from seeing his older pictures she knows he had white hair before it went naturally white. He was a consummate showman when it came to his image. He was a master of body language and between the two he found his way into the bank accounts of Kings, Dictators, Potentates, and the noble houses of the nations of the world. He was given Billions by some of the worst people or people born into untold privilege. He used that money to join their club and become one of the most powerful men on earth. She recognized the pictures, and she knew where he was broadcasting from. She knew he was in his office. It was usually the place he took his pictures on his book jackets. The hair hid a man in his later 70s and early 80s and provided him with a sense of vitality beyond his years. He also was a man who had always been in the peak of physical health. He invested in the best health care companies and solicited the best doctors the world had to offer. He also practiced Yoga and Tai Chi like a fanatic. Cassie sighed mentally to herself wishing she could use that photo she got of him going to the finest hospitals for communist party members in Cuba. She wishes she could also prove the other members of the Castro family were some of his first investors. “Hello Dynamic Woman. It took me a moment to find you.” She furrowed her brow. “I wish to personally apologize for the unpleasantness that happened earlier. In exchange for 30 minutes of your time I will turn over my complete dossier on you. I will even provide you with the proprietary information on how I assembled it. I want nothing more then to be able to have an amicable and equitable relationship with you.” Cassie thought to take a breath but remembered their was no oxygen so she counted to ten trying to calm down. Alexi spoke again breaking her attempt to get calm. “I did not order my man to do what he did. He has been in my service a very long time and his actions are most regrettable. He is dead now and I give you my word none of my people or people my people hire will ever lay a hand upon you ever again...or your husband. You defended yourself and his death was entirely justifiable.” She tempers her anger because the last thing she needs is to destroy this satellite, especially now. “I am in the middle of something but I think I can get a guest host in if I need to. Would my normal time-slot be satisfactory to you?” Alexi nods affirmatively “We can resolve this as two civilized human beings. And may our humanity unite us all.” Stalo's image goes off the Satellite. She concentrates again and a phone call goes over to Lou. “Lou we have a change of plans I need a guest host for tonight’s show. I also need you to get Vaughn on the show. I don't care how just get it done.” Lou pauses for a moment. “Vaughn? The most Liberal yet some how Conservative member of the senate? The guy we ran brutal satires of back when we were still on Radio?” Cassie rolls her eyes. “Yes, that same Vaughn. Also tell Hiram you and he need to meet with Vaughn. And tell Hiram he needs to bring the Red Envelope.” Lou stops his procession down the hallway. “The RED envelope? Are you sure of this Cassie? And also doesn't Craver kind of hate you? Like a lot?” she shakes her head and the simulated voice continues. “I am not sure of anything right now. But we need to put that bullet into the gun. And if anyone can convince the President of doing the right thing if we need him to, its Vaughn. As for the rest...I know what we know about what the President thinks about us and our show, but I also know right now if I am right I am going to need the President to have my back on this.” Lou popped a couple of altoids. A habit he started in N.A. Whenever he was wanting to go for his addiction. “What if I can't get Vaughn?” She smiled “Then you better hope I don't need to get Vaughn. Sorry I have to go we have a problem right now in Afghanistan and I am just 10 minutes away if I can do calculus right.” Lou Laughs “so, more like 30?” She rolled her eyes. Some times she wondered if having people who don't know her on staff would be a much better way to go. Alexi Stalo is sitting in his office feeding his Bombay cat some organic chicken based treats as his daughter sits up. “Father I think this project is foolish, as is your quest to try to check Dynamic Woman.” Stephanie Stalo has long black hair and a dark skin. He remembers her mother fondly. She was his first love and they met again in London when she was at Cambridge and he was at the London School of economics. Stephanie showcases the finest features of her Romany and Jewish ancestry. That and a few subtle works of a plastic surgeon. Her long black hair in contrast to her white dress and in contrast still to the earthy tones of her fathers office. She went to the best prep schools her fathers money could buy. She got a degree from Harvard, another from Yale, and another still from Todai. She was part of the old vision of the trilateral world. Alexi abandoned that as he saw the decline of Trilateralism and begun to see a larger picture. As much as he would conflict with her vision Stephanie gave him an insight he would have 20-30 years earlier. Her youth is invaluable to him as is the purity of her soul. Alexi is wearing a charcoal gray suit and a blue shirt. He is working today without a tie. “Stephanie you have not looked over her record I have. She was small time before September 11 and was as most Empowered individuals a “local phenomena.” Most of them were nothing more then urban legends till she came around. She changed everything and has become a broader inspiration. Her inspiration isn't focused on some higher purpose but on a short term transaction of right and wrong. We need her, she is an exemplar of something greater then herself that people need. We need people like her to be front in center in our great work.” She remained skeptical but trusted in her father's wisdom. Stephanie however moved her response back to her father. “While all of this is true, do you remember when people tried to put you under their paw? Do you remember how you chaffed and looked for the ability to make your move to free yourself from them? I think you underestimate how much this woman is like you in very fundamental ways.” He smiled at his daughter and indulged her opinions while he prepared for his power meeting. Alexi's secretary buzzes him. “Its Salvatore, he has some work product for you sir.” Alexi smiled like a child on Christmas day “Send him in, send him in.” Alexi loved Salvatore like a son he never had, which is more amusing because he had two sons. But salvatore more then anyone he had ever met saw the economies and systems of the power the way he did. He understood how the numbers worked at an instinctual and fundamental level. Salvatore came in with a bunch of printed numbers. For any other person these printed materials would seem laughably absurd but not for Sal. Sal had a love for the tactile sense of printer paper. The paper coming off an old feed printer that was like it came from the computers of the 1980s. Strung togther as a long ribbon of numbers and graphs. Sal was running numbers and books on the street when he was 7. He kept scraps of paper handy and would communicate the numbers. He kept the numbers on his scrap in a code. The police busted him as a kid but were never able to figure it out. The police did arrest him later but in those early days the paper gave him a sense of triumph over the police. His genius for numbers and the psychological factors of the economic forces that drive peoples lives is unparalleled. This made him a good bookie and a better broker. But the truth is he is no longer shaving points off of sports games, but is shaving points off of GDPs of countries big and small. “Ok Mr. Stalo, I crunched the numbers. France has to be it. This is going to be bigger when you crashed the Pound but it has to be France, the Status Quo can deal with anything else.” Alexi starts riffling through the papers. “What about taking out Italy and Spain?” Salvatore shook his head. “At this point the market is baked into the cake that they are going to go soon. France at least has an illusion that its safe. They will fall down the stairs anyway, but if we push them down the stairs early that will change the game. There aren't enough German Bankers to march down the Champs Elysee to fix this mess if we can take France down now. Now if we do this your going to nuke the Socialist Party, does that work with the political agenda? And quite frankly the Gaulists aren't going to be able to cope with what you will do.” Alexi thought for a moment “Maybe I can provide resources to the Green party. Though we may have to create some new party organizations.” Stephanie was confused for a moment and spoke up “To what end are we crashing the French?” Alexi nodded attentively to his daughter. Her work on this would be critical and she does need to be read in. “The EU will keep kicking the can down the road. We need the EU to be less an alliance of states and become a true federal superstate. To do this we will have to destroy the Euro. Once the Euro is destroyed they will take any step necessary to rebuild it. Then we will have a European Republic which will be the first proof in concept that our vision will work and that we can achieve our goals of a united world. We must destroy the sovereignty of all of the European states so we can achieve true human sovereignty and rule. ” Stephanie frowns a bit as she takes a deeper thought of the suffering that will come from all of this. “How long will it take to achieve all of this?” Salvatore looks at his numbers. “Assuming we don't cook up any more pressure with the Piigs....maybe 4 years or 5.” Alexi read over the numbers. “Could we perhaps do a cascade? Starting with Greece, then Portugal, then Spain, then Italy, and then France?” He was thinking about the financial crisis of the 90s when he made so much wealth. That crisis made the war chest he uses today. “ The problem is each country you do that with your going to increase the difficulty exponentially. Thats part of why the Asian Financial flu was so radical and hard to control. We can make the traders into vigilantes on France but that might be doable faster if we lubricate enough people in the global media.” Alexi nodded and began to write up a list of names. “These are some people we can start with when we are ready to prime the press. But I have a important meeting, perhaps the most important meeting of my life. I need some time to be alone with my thoughts.” Stephanie took a longer pause. “Papa just remember, when men broke Germany we ended up with Hitler. You have had a great deal of success breaking countries, but one of these days it may backfire quite horribly.” Alexi smiled at his daughter again. He does not want to break people and leave them broken, he wants to break them and rebuild them. He understands her concern but he must press on with the work and with the change he needs to move forward. When they left Alexi took to pouring out a single malt scotch. He thought about it and decided to pull out one of his investment grade bottles. The cost of this was now going for around 1000 dollars a shot and he took a slow draw from his drink. 'Some times extravagance is a reward that is worth taking.' His father told them this when they went to the work camps. Young Alexi wondered how it was right some should go to the death camps and they should survive. He often reflected on that wisdom of his father's. The extravagance his father had in the war moved his family to safety. The extravagance he had when he left the soviet bloc gave Alexi the gateway to remaking the world. Treasure for the sake of treasure is a fools game. Treasure for the purpose of true freedom is fundamental when you do such a noble and important work. He started to play some Chopin and reflect on the Dossier. The truth of the matter he wishes he could pursue those who produced it and got his money back. Most of what they produced was trivial and uninformative. She lived both of her lives with little secrecy in her personality. He was struck by this honesty she had deep in her person, and how she had to hide herself behind a series of masks. They were all honest masks but all reflected a partial truth. He spent much of his life building masks. He often thought if that was how God truly was. He put himself in masks and different phenomena so that man would see the truth they needed to move forward to something greater. He wondered this even though he was pretty certain their was no god at all. He crucially needed to be ready for this meeting with Dynamic Woman. Their first meeting had promise but it has begun to spin wildly out of his control. She was a variable that could undermine his great work and that was not something he would allow. He read the words out loud. “Dynamic Woman has a desire to showcase herself. This means her personality in her private life must be more reserved.” He laughed. This psychological profile was entirely useless. Though in fairness the people who wrote it did not have a true sense of what they needed to bring togther to come up with the proper picture. He was going to bluff and tell her this dossier had the information he used to find her but the truth of it was he wasted a 15 million making it. The cost of finding her was a man's life and his intuition. And both of those were of a value that was beyond money to Alexi. The truth of the matter was he had to cut back on his donations to the Democratic Party which helped fuel the rise of Cassie Stryker. Her canidates did better then his. He often wondered if he didn't spend so much time trying to pierce the veil of her secrets if that would have happened. The ironies of this amuse him. He pauses to reflect back on the first time he saw her. To see if he could use his own mind to find the deeper truths he seeks. Cassie begins her return from space. She begins to drop from the sky and crack the sound barrier. Her cape shrinks in size as she makes her descent. It seems like only yesterday she didn't know who Alexi Stalo was, and yesterday was a simpler day. The truth was she had began her game of cat and mouse with Alexi Stalo for about 3 years. Alexi was there representing Humanitus Socius at a conference of NGOs trying to develop a strategy to work to resolve the situation of Food and other vital supply aid coming in to areas of Mynmar that were struck by a Tsunami. Cassie took the problem with a different approach. It took a while for her to work the logistics of stuffing a few semi trucks worth of supplies into something she could easily carry. And she simply brought the food to the people. The first few villiages the solution worked well. But when she went to Bogalay she was confronted with the forces of the military. The Junta did not want outsiders providing aid, they wanted control of who lived and who died. This was one of Dynamic Woman's first pushes onto the International Stage. Members of the Mynmar opposition made sure the video hit the internet and every news service. She made short work of the counter insurgency force of infantry soldiers. The government of Mynmar very quickly bent itself to allow her to supervise the distribution of aid. They realized very quickly she wasn't going to be stopped and the weapons systems they had that were of a higher value were far more crucial to securing their control of the country. She derailed the purpose of the conference. For Alexi this was a most serious situation. He was planning to use the conference to influence a broader normalization of relations for Mynmar. So while she saved the poor people she allowed the dictatorship to remain isolated from most of the world. She arrived at the conference as it was about to end. Alexi was first to line up to shake your hand. “That was most riveting, how you were able to put that aid in there and help those people. I was wondering however if perhaps you would be interested in following up on some deeper problems with their regime?” Cassie didn't know him then as she knows him now. So she was receptive to his overtures. He snapped his fingers and a staffer brought some information into a folder. It was about some dealings with some firms from China, Iran, and Venezuela in Mynmar. Cassie quickly scanned the papers. “You can find a rouge regime with weapons of mass destruction when your President cannot.” He smiled knowingly he had his doubts that Dynamic woman had the ability to follow his breadcrumbs and would get lost in the process. Underestimating Dynamic Woman he would later come to see as a grave error. The problem in finding this wasn't looking for the big picture. It wasn't finding the next piece of evidence. It would require simply finding the places on the map where the information was most incomplete. In this case it was the Chinese companies. It was very simple to find the company that was supervising the operation and its ownership by the People's Liberation Army. Getting to the general in question was less then an easy task for Cassie. He was commander of a special weapons research base in china. Their security was likely going to be high but how high she really didn't know.When the rest of the world dealt with the empowered as an amusing street level vigilante, The Chinese government held a much more pragmatic concern how to deal with it. They wanted to put money into research. The truth of the matter was a lot of governments worried about the consequence of these weaponized beings. Antiaircraft missiles first greeted Cassie. The general in Kumming was either prepared for her arrival or was very paranoid. Cassie lead the missiles outside the city to try and depose of them with safety. She tried to see if she could work them into crashing instead of making a quick acute angle turn. But she wasn't able to pull off that maneuver. She had to settle with dumping them into the side of the mountain near by. For her courtesy for the people in this village she was greeted with a squad of tanks. Cassie gritted her teeth. This was her first time committing an act of war against another country. 'Maybe I should turn myself in for violating the Logan act.' She chuckled at the internal joke in her own head.She wasn't even really committing an act of war to fight for truth, justice, or the American way. She was doing it to try to find out about a scheme to create and spread weapons of mass destruction in a rouge regime. “Hey, do any of you speak English? I am not sure I can translate my words into your language.”The Tanks responded with a barrage of machine gun fire. A voice broadcasts over a speaker system “Surrender now!”. Cassie dusted off the shredded remains of the bullets that attacked her. “Well I guess some one speaks English.” She soon found she was able to make a short work of the tanks. She braced herself for the first shot of the shell. She threw her left hand and used it to deflect a second shell that was hitting her. The explosion pushed her back but left no other effect of notice. The machine gun fire was something she already knew how to handle. She quickly shred the barrels of the tank with her bare hands in quick order. She proceeded to pop the first turret off the top of the tank. She ripped it open like a clam. The soldiers on the inside drew their service weapons at her and proceeded to fire. A bluish energy beam broadcast from dynamic woman's eyes and an electrical shock traveled from the gun to the hands of the tank crew. Her cape flew at the men and wrapped around them like a tentacle of some kind of sea monster as she flung them from the Tank. The men however needed no further prompting as they proceeded to run as far away as they could. As she went to the next tank the soldiers fell back to their positions. The next shots that came from a power armor were unexpected. And then they discharged a rail gun at her. She made a quick run run for the Rail gun. The second shot hit her and that shot hurt, her costume shredded a little and it began to weave itself back into order. The rail gun was the real threat to her. It was put on a smaller station built into the mountain. That would be easy enough to deal with. She discharged a burst of her energy blast ripping the command complex for the Rail gun apart with a series of explosions. The scientists, engineers and soldiers all scatter from the explosions but the man in the armor attacks her from behind knocking her into the ground. “You sure you wouldn't like to talk” She spoke as he pushed back at her with a small flame thrower system built into the Armor. “I guess we have to do this the hard way.” She says as she slowly pulled the helmet from the armor. The servos and systems in the armor made it a little harder for her to rip apart like the tank but her fingers and strength eventually made the metal succumb. She then removed the soldier from his exo skeleton. “Run, and run fast.” She yelled at him. He understood much more english then he spoke. Her game was a bit of a bluff. She didn't have the ability to hold them. And while she is able to tear this small squad apart a larger military force could cause her problems. The General and his soldiers made haste to escape after their experimental weapons system failed them. She pondered if the general made her way through the base to neutralize any incriminating files. She didn't have much time to take any incriminating information. She made her way through a quick inspection of the base that the soldiers abandoned quickly. They had deleted most of the computer files but they didn't delete them all. They had also made short work of the paper copies and files they had on the base. She found a camera system in the generals office and it was there she saw Gregory Lawson the first time. The second time she would see him is during the unfortunate incident that lead to her taking his life. “Are you comfortable with these negotiations in English?” he says in an awkward pace. Gregory was a stocky man with a light blonde hair and a deep brown eyes. He had a weathering and tanning on his skin that did not take away from his rugged good looks. He was wearing a old khaki uniform of some sort and Cassie is not sure where it is from. “That would be fine, I rarely get the chance to practice my English.” The general is drinking a whiskey of some kind but its hard to see which in the old video image. His uniform is finely pressed and in top form. “What if we could lobby some friends here to get the ******** moved here? This would be the command of a lifetime.” The burst of static killed the sound. “And to what honor do I owe some one lobbying on behalf of my career?” he looked skeptically at the stranger. “You know who I work for. And I know you have ties to our friends in Venezuala, Iran, Mynmar, and other places of note. My employer has need of the People's Liberation Army to provide us with some influence there. In addition I can provide you with ********* so when you turn it over to your superiors of course you are the only person who can do *****. Really you would be the only person who could.” All else Cassie was able to find was some documents in Russian. So she went on the next leg of the trail. The Russian documents showcased the power armor and the rail gun were both based off of old soviet era research. The soviet research wasn't as current as what the Russians now but it probably gave the Chinese a decade or two of research in making their prototypes. She also had a few detailed reports on experiments with empowered individuals. What was more interesting is most of them were moved to another command. That might have made this fight more difficult for Cassie. She smiled gladly before leaving the base. Alexi gets a call from his lawyer and fixer Nikolai Tremayne. Nikolai was one of the loyal members of Alexi's inner circle. Alexi was a few months from when he sent this Dynamic Woman on her wild goose chase. Nikolai was working on a project with their investing house in Singapore. “Really Alexi, I am not sure this project is worth the cost.” Alexi looked at his current investments from his personal account. “If we reduce our holdings in Brazilian Oil and gas we might be able to finance this on the difference.” Nikolai looked over the numbers. “Your security protocols are more what concerns me. Your focusing on making sure no part of the team has all the data means it will be much more costly then it needs to be. And far less efficient as well.” He laughs at his lawyer. “This is very important information, Its well worth the cost.” Nikolai takes a tense response. “Very well sir. I will put the paperwork together.” He hired a team that took all the publicly available data on Dynamic Woman on the internet and in public news services. A lot of it was interesting but hardly informative. He had to get a few forensic teams together to try to take the data and develop it more efficiently. Gregory Lawson brought him a report of Dynamic Woman hitting their contact in the Chinese Military. He smiled. He took a small general who worked on some outreach by the PLA and made him a golden child of Chinese Military research. He wanted to make sure this man did not become to much of a rising star. He would have been an uncontrollable resource if he rose to quickly. And now he has to explain why his base and billions of dollars in research have now been laid into ruins. He took a few moments to think perhaps he might need to change his long term strategic investments in China.And hopefully the chaos destroyed any unnecessary evidence. He pondered if he should call the people in Russia who provided him with the research information he needed. The truth be told he had a personal animus against former KGB agents who profit as looters from their own regime. He also never trusted a man he paid to betray his country either. He also had clashed swords with the Russian government on more then one occasions geopolitically so he was not confident they didn't have a revenge file on him that they could drop if anyone traced this back to the Russians. They lacked introspection and an ability to regain control over their humanity. But these Russians were more then a tad crafty. He did not want to know if they were prepared with a double cross for this situation. “Yuri, this is Alexi. I just want to warn you that you may have an unwelcome guest.” Yuri the Hammer was much different from his Chinese counterpart. He lived a double life in the light and in the dark in Volgograd. He is a man who was able to lubricate paperwork for the right money. He is a man who can deal with the disappearance of various artifacts from government warehouses. So he was a valuable friend to people who wanted imports and exports to go under the table from Russia. While his Chinese counterpart had a trap set up he made sure the breadcrumbs lead Dynamic Woman to him in a peaceful situation. In large part because of his extra side business. To many people would be upset if to many stones were unturned. And it always helps to make a good impression with some one who can toss a public bus around.Yuri had his hair in a tight crew cut. He was a young agent when the KGB fell. He moved into other aspects of the Russian Bureaucracy and became a consummate rent seeker. He was in the public archives office and was able to move some defunct research through a third party to the Chinese. “They were comrades once” he the thought, so this was not really treason. He had fun listening to old comrades in the intelligence agencies spitting blood about how the Chinese advanced weapons research had jumped ahead by over 20 years. When Stalo called him he was thinking about how to play his next move. He didn't trust him because of his family ties. His father was able to play Hitler and Tito. Yuri's father taught him that a man's family says a great deal about him and his father even more so. A billionaire who styles himself a citizen of the world becomes even lest trustworthy to Yuri. But at the same point in time a cowboy American with superpowers was coming for him. A cowboy American he could trust more then Stalo. Still it was better to be safe then sorry. It was an experimental weapon with a small torpedo on it. He wasn't sure if it would work but it was best to have an insurance policy in case anything went wrong. Dynagirl arrived on the Penthouse and Yuri is sitting there with a cigar and some fine vodka. “You are late young lady. I would have expected you sooner after you dealt with our Chinese friend.” Cassie was caught off guard. “I am sorry I didn't know I had an appointment.” Yuri laughed at came up to grasp her hand. “So I take it since I was not as foolish as launching an assault with an entire military base at you we might be able to be civil?” Cassie nodded as Yuri called down to his kitchen staff. “I also figured at the moment as I have nothing to hide from you there is no reason to fight with you. I might even be able to help you.” She waved off any offer of food. The food was heavy with a cabbage smell. The cabbage was not fresh nor was it well cooked. The sausage gave of a metallic aroma. She wasn't sure if he did this on purpose or he was trying to see if he could poison her. “So what is it you want to know from me?” He folds his hands on the table. “I've been following some investments in companies I think that are helping the government of Mynmar develop weapons of mass destruction. Our Chinese friend was the link of the chain that was supposed to tie it togther.” Yuri smiled again. “Well you really don't need to search for more information. It is all absolutely true your suspicion. 100% true and factual, and I am pretty sure you could bust them. As for people up the food chain we are very clear that this is not for 'Weapons Program Purposes' we even put a gold star on the contract to show we are serious. Is that why you blew up large areas of rural china?” She paused for a moment but Yuri spoke up. “And it goes further. Your government is well aware of these actions. But these actions are not worth World War III. Most of them aren't worth a federal case.” He disposed of his plates in a dumbwaiter. “You suspected their was something more, something larger at work? Its good I am glad you are not just a pretty face behind a mask. In governments where the rule of law means less then the laws of rulers and rules people turn a blind eye of actions of myself and others if it puts a mote in the eye of the American government. If we have you Americans putting out fires on the periphery we can push our agenda deeper into more serious and important areas. The reality is the callous disregard for the life of the people of Mynmar by their own government show they hold them in such low value that their opinion of them matches the rest of the world. Their suffering only matters in our larger political context.” his food came out and he began to eat. “Your guided by your moral compass. You don't care what happens you just want to cut out the evil of their regime. Its quite admirable but hardly efficent. If you tried to yolk yourself to hunt down all this evil you would have no time for anything resembling a life. And I doubt you are some kind of robot.” She paused for a moment “Then who payed you off to give the Chinese the technology they used to attack me?” Yuri smiled and was quite happy that he could place a dagger. “Pardon me as an American I will have to parse my languge with you. Stalo had me provide the technology to the Chinese. It was going nowhere here in Russia but in China it would work to further a political balance of power. Fat lot of good it did them. Blowing their wad on you like that.”She eyed him up and down “With his long term problem with the Russian Government. Why did you trust him.” Yuri smiled again “I didn't trust him, but I did trust the fact his money cleared my bank account. Thats always the finest trust to apply to a situation such as this.” She stood up less certain then she was when she came. “what proof do I have of your accusation?” he poored a drink of Vodka and watched her reaction. “And why would I give you information that useful. While most of the time his political interests disagree with my governments more often then not he provides me a way to serve my paymaster secretly and be richly rewarded. Why would I give you a way to stop that?” She got up and thought about confronting him but restrained herself. “You are a smart woman, I am very pleased by this. Perhaps some day you will have something worthy of me betraying the man I betrayed my country for. That way you could hall him off in irons and give him the criminal sentence he deserves. But you have taken a glimpse bellow the surface. I promise you there is more to seek out.” Cassandra listened to his heartbeat. He wasn't calm but he wasn't panicing either. He had a plan b if this all went wrong. “I hope I don't have to see you again.” Yuri got up to shake her hand. “Young lady, I certainly hope I get to see you many more times.” Her meeting with Yuri alarmed Cassandra. So Cassie began to follow the money. This was a case of the TV show host being more capable of getting the job done then the cape. Because since she went into the world of Journalism she always stuck to following the money. It was the Edward and Bernstein rule of thumb. The way he came to power in the financial world is quite insidious. Did he topple the bank of england, or was the bank of england ready to get a shove down the stairs. Did he front for more sinsister figures or did mearly go from being a small sinister figure to a larger one. Does he support political movements which create extreme political and social instability so he can profit from the natural coincidence of it. What was more insidious was on occasions Autocratic regimes would get help inexplicably in a similar pattern to how the Junta in Mynmar got their influx of capital and deadly weapons technology. Occasionally a rebel group would get some help that doesn't fit into the larger geopolitical picture. And there are financial movements from the web of companies and foundations under the Aegis of Stalo that seem to be involved. However its unprovable in the court of law or the court of public opinion. Cassie herself wondered if the connections were real or were part of the fevered imaginings that came as she stared at computer screens for to to long. But the question of how to flush out the missing pieces kept bothering Cassie. But she looked at some of the groups funding the push back in support of the President against her critique. Once she saw that the answer was amazingly simple. Max came up behind her in their home office and put his hands on her shoulders. “You know the kids asked me to come in here to see if they have a mother. It turns out they do.” She smiled weakly and gave her husband a strong firm kiss. “I'm sorry, I just found something on an investigation and its taken me deeper then I thought it would.” he smiled and clasped her hand. “I love you cassie. You spent so much of your old life in addiction. I know that makes you intense and in the middle of every moment. You just have to remember the kids don't know who you were. The kids don't even know who you really are.” She turned off the computer and looked at him. “Do you really think its time?” Her oldest child was 14 and her youngest was 8 born very shortly after she became Dynamic Woman. “I mean can we realistically expect the kids to keep this kind of secret?” He looked her in the eyes. “Keeping a secret life hurts you every day. The fact your able to balance a secret life, a private life, and a public life all togther is hard on you hun. I can totally see it.” She smiled and kissed him again. “Thank you for reminding me why I keep you around in my life.” She casually grabbed her husband with one arm and with a full alacrity went up the stairs. The love of her husband and her friends were one of the things that kept cassie sane. Max asked her to give up one of her lives but she always told him no. She kept these lives because there was so much she felt called to do in her life to help the people of her nation and her world live a freer and richer life. But Max's love gave her the strength to go forward with her clash against the excentric billionaire. This was an amazingly short production meeting Cassie held. It was Lou, Matt and Charlie. In addition to being three key figures in the on air they were all in on Cassie's other life. Charlotte “Charlie” was the youngest and most recent of the crew. She was assigned by Veritax to work for their inaugural broadcast. When the second broadcast was disturbed by Cassie missing work for a Prison riot she had to ask a series of difficult questions which only brought more. The decision to let her into the circle of trust came quickly. She had a curly long dark hair and a rich olive base tan on her skin. She tend to be Casual business casual for most meetings. Charlie was the first to ask the most obvious question in the world “Shouldn't this be an answer solve by 'Bamf'.” Matt and Lou both concurred with the analysis. “The problem isn't one that can be solved by directed force. If I have the right thing to cut out at the right time I can weaken his position. But I don't even know what questions I have to ask. By pushing him on the media end we have an opportunity to find those places and expose him where we can go at him. Matt was the next one to speak with the painfully obvious question. “We just spent a lot of time goring the President's bull. We got a lot of heat from the President of the network on down. Are you willing to go after one of the richest men in America who actually has the luxury of suing the pants off us?” Cassie looked back at his staff. “So your telling me that this is the craziest idea I have ever come to you with?” They all nodded. “What if we start small and we try to find stories that connect to him?” Lou looked pensively at her. “Cassie, I will say this is a bad idea but I think that’s the best way we can do this bad idea.” Cassie also had a stray thought enter her head. “I think we should use Charlie from now on when we need a new guest host or back up. Make her our double secret permanent guest host.” Lou and Matt both agreed with her. She made a call to Veritax corporate to change Charlie's pay. She put a note in a blue envelope and put it in her desk. “Welcome to the Strike Zone. I am sure you have seen some of the austerity protests going on across Eastern Europe today.” On the blue screen behind Cassie an image of a farm protest in Romania, Hungary, and Poland are showcased. “But have you ever wondered is this, connected to this?” Testimony is showcased on congress by people talking about how the debt and deficit don't matter, and how the deficit in social security and medicare don't matter. “Its time we connect the dots. Lets go into the strike zone.” Alexi Stalo turned off the TV in his office. “Nikolai, what can we do about this?” His lawyer scanned through some files on his I-Pad. “Well we can of course put a press release out on how we have funded organizations that funded these organizations and how...” Alexi cut him off abruptly. “Don't bullshit me. I have talked to the Baron and this is just a taste. This is what they can go to air with today. This insignificant little bitch came after the President. She came after good people in the White House, the bitch came after our people. Don't you think this is to convinent that she is coming after us now?” Nikolai put down his I-Pad “And you went after her. I hardly think escalating this further will benefit you.” He slammed his fisk on the desk. “Bullshit, I have worked to hard and to long to have to deal with this nonsense at the final years of my life. I need to prep the table for the end game.” Nikolai had looked at Alexi as a mentor and a father figure in his own life. He know see's this crisis for what it is. “I know who to go to bat for you with in this case. But orthodox methods of dealing with this are running dry unless she stumbles.” Alexi went to the bar to poor himself another stiff drink. “This little bitch is cunning and cagey. We need to swat her like a bug if we have to.” Nikolai took a long deep breath. “We haven't swatted anyone like a bug here....” Alexi cuts him off and places his hands firmly on Nikolai's shoulders. “Nikolai, I don't pay you to incriminate me. I pay you to make sure that if there is any risk in my organization or in my company that any blame falls on another. Rid me of this petulant woman. For got sake don't get stupid on me and tell me how your going to do it.” He then began to review tape of the riots in Poland being broken up by Dynamic woman. “And this petulant doo-gooder. She is also becoming more and more of an annoyance. Our operations in pushing the EU powers to the table and building political pressure to eliminate national sovereignty is at a crucial period. What we don't need is this woman breaking up the pressure and letting out steam. She is messing with my plans on two continents now. I don't have the patience for her to mess with me on a third or fourth. Get on our people, we need to have this dossier put together. I need to know who she is.” He stood their fuming at the screen and Nikolai left the office. He took his phone and made a quick call to Stephanie. “Steph darling this is Niko.” Stephanie took a some what sunny perk in her voice at his calling. “How is King Richard? Does he still have the boys in the tower?” She could make these flippant jokes with Nikolai. They both had a great deal of uncertainty about his drive to achieve his large goals in his great work. “Your father is on a tear. I need to talk to you about it. Can I come by your place?” She smiled again. “You are a cheeky knight errant. I suppose we can meet at my place. I don't have any meetings I can't blow off.” Truth be told when the estate of Alexi Stalo was broken up he would have a son take over the management and running of his fund. So far as any trades made through New York is concerned Alexi's son Reuben already was in-charge. But Nikolai wanted more then to be the trusted chancellor to the dark king. He wanted to romance the daughter of the dark king and be on her good side. For Stephanie things were much more pragmatic. She was using him. She was using him for sex at a most basic level, but she was also using him to try to make him a better influence on the angels of her fathers nature. More and more the two of them conspired to take the darker impulses her father had and turn them at the worst into morally gray propositions. As they rested on pillows after the seduction he told her his burden from her father and she told him how to make it work. Her father underestimated her, and underestimated her growing influence over his larger empire. “So here is how I think you should handle it. Get Greg to follow her. If there is something blackmailable going on Greg will be able to find it. Meanwhile you go to her production team. I think they can be reasoned with better then the network.” Nikolai pushes the pillows so he can sit up. He looks into her eyes. “why do you say that? Shouldn't the network have the power?” She laughs at him. “You obviously didn't pay enough attention in Contract law. She has a very broad latitude and at this point she is dangerously close to contract renegotiation. They push her to hard and they lose all that money she makes them. And even with our driving off the low to mid hanging fruit advertisers she still brings them in money. They even stuck their neck out over the White House's ham handed attempts to go after her. They won't bring the hammer down unless she messes up. And Cassie Stryker's team won't let her. She hired a team to keep her grounded and focused and they are very good at their job. That is who you need to divide and conquer and not another Billionaire. You need to play on their loyalty to her.” She smiled amusingly at the closeness of this woman and her father. She smiled with a certain knowing satisfaction that neither of the two of them would get it either. Nikolai started to gather his clothes. “I need to go to DC to begin to set things up. If I am going to make this work I need to arrange this like a mafia styled sit down. I know just the person I need to go to to make this happen.” She however had another thing in mind. “Hello can I speak to some one in our Poland office?” She switched from English to German. “Yes you know that Rally that Cassie Stryker is looking at putting on in Poland? I know what my father may send down from the head office. I want you to put your ears to the ground quietly. If we can, I want us to get behind it. Yes I know what my father says about the crazy American. I also know dad worked with the American Government to help liberate people in the former Soviet States when he was younger. If we can yolk our enemies to our work we have a chance to make our enemy into an ally and we have a chance to do the work. Yes, if any backlash comes from Dad you tell him I gave you a direct order. And you remind him he set up the organization so my Orders can trump his.” She put on her robe and begin to feed her Canary. She began to whistle an old folk song that she doesn't even remember the words to. “So my songbird, are we ready to fly away from all this?” Alexi looked over the poll numbers. He wadded them up and threw them across the room. Salvatore brought these poll numbers in but they did not please him. “Look sir, its not like this is a country. Its easier to hate a group then to hate a person. Especially a person that has so far only been focusing on cases where the line between right and wrong is very clear.” He laughs. “Its hardly clear at all thats the point. The Korean War was not a success at the time of the border being finalized. Its a success today as we have one of the beacons of the free market system and one of the greatest tragedies in the world. They were a military dictatorship at one point and now its a democratic and relatively just society. They will have a set back when the north collapses that will push them to the eventual global hegemony for support. So the human suffering in North Korea while a failure today brings us one step closer to having the vision of a one world government of man. We cannot live in the judgment of today.” Salvatore set back in the chair. “There is a reason people like cops and firemen. And there is a reason people like firemen more then cops. The problem is Dynamic woman hasn't been put into the situation where she has to be the cop. Where she has to play against the power of the mob. She hasn't had to do as the fireman and play against the entitlement instinct of others. That will happen in time if you want to put a check on her power.” Stalo took his hands through his hair. “If we had that sort of time on the table we would play it that way. More and more I see co-opting her truly is the only way to go.” Sal looked him in the eyes. “Sir, are you dying?” Alexi laughed at this. “I have destroyed human lives in the millions, maybe even in the billions. I have destroyed pensions and dreams of people. I have molded nations and their destines as some men mold clay. The more and more I look at my work I will not see my dream until I die. What good is it to be a man and know that history will build statues in your honor? Or even worse I could be like Benjamin Franklin. Old and enfeebled looking at my great work being completed by younger men in the twilight of my years. I do not want justification or pardon for my deeds when I am gone or when I can't enjoy them. I want them now.” Salvatore smiled for a moment. “I know that feeling well sir. I made a lot of money in both of my other lives playing that feeling. You've made more fortunes then I could imagine playing that feeling. The problem isn't that we are finite in this world sir. The problem is what we choose to do with our life is so wasteful. Your doing with words, ideas, and money what people with armies haven't been able to do. If your daughter achieves the dream of Alexander the Great so what? Can't you be satisfied with being the father of Alexander?” Salvatore picked up his stuff and left. He unfortunately knew that answer. Before he left he turned back and looked at Alexi. “Boss you washed my sins clean. You gave me a life I can never repay you for even if I gave you every moment of my day. But if you bring down your empire I am not sure I will last as you made me now. I am sure I will have to go back to my old life. Just remember boss that you are the great man, but your generals need you to not destroy our armies.” 2010 was turning into a challenging year for Alexi. Nikolai was at the Veritax studios in Washington D.C the Veritax meeting was a formality to set up a dinner meeting. The President of Veritax news was a penultimate Washington insider. He was a senior campaign staffer in more Presidential campaigns then most people have ever seen and been a deputy or a congressional chief of staff to a host of republican officals. He set up the deal for Cassie with the Baron. When Nikolai was trying to set up the meeting he wanted to make sure that Sherman Walker was behind him to buy Lou into the meeting. Sherman had the same ears of Prince charles but hair like Donald Trump. He was a comical looking short man who commanded a great deal of political and economic power. Lou walked into the back room of the restaurant and his first thought was did tessio hide the gun in the bathroom like he was supposed to.

2011 NaNoWriMo day 6 17043

Stillborn in my own time By Larry Austin Bernard Acknowledgment: *This story is inspired and in some parts based upon Gladiator by Phillip Wylie. *Any references to : Superman, The Black Terror, Captain America, and other Super Heroes whose origins are similarly inspired by Gladiator are an intentional homage and honor to those stories *Thanks to Daniel Burgmeister who gave me some suggestions for my german names. *Thanks to my friend J.F for encouraging me to refrence Dr Strangelove. *The name of any real world Newspapers of Media or any persons real is purely for literary purposes and to lend a air of verisimilitude to the story. I: Down Mexico Way The fire of AK-47's cuts the air in Nuevo Laredo. Los Zetas are fighting a 3 way war with the Sinola Cartel and elements of the Mexican Police and Army. The Cartels had a mix of arms. The automatic weapons were mostly products of the umbrella of Soviet styled weapons. The small arms were as near as he could tell products of American firearms manufacturers. Fredrick Mann a blogger and freelance reporter stood on the tallest building near the heat of action. His guides are a former career DEA agent who had resigned when what is now known as the “Operation Gun Runner” scandal began to go public. His companion was a career Mexican narcotics agent who resigned in protest of the corruption endemic in his country. Both men went with the reporter to give him a sense of the scope of the war that has been enhanced by this scandal, much to their chagrin it turns out the war was ready to be televised. Fredrick pulled out a digital recorder to begin to compose his thoughts. Fredrick had quit smoking inspired by President Obama during the 2008 campaign. As he has gone deeper into the cartel violence in Mexico he has found his old vice one of the few comforts for his sanity. Fredrick's father told him that you should never invest to much in your heroes because they were just men at the end of the day. But the bigger the man the more people pay the cost for his fall. The had the best monitoring equipment that Newsweek/Daily beast would pay for. It was good quality police grade equipment. Not the best but among some of the best that you could buy without being law enforcement, intelligence, or military. They didn't intend to monitor the scene so closely from here. They initially intended to test out the equipment to get a sense of the lay of the land. It just turns out that the timing was most excellent to see something most horrific. It turns out the drug war was going to get real hot. Fredrick decided to take some notes to get his thoughts of the moment down for him so he could use it later. “This is Fredrick Mann. I am here with my guides to look at the geography of the cartel war that’s destroying northern Mexico. Little did we realize we would be seeing the destruction live as it was happening.” An anti-tank weapon was thrown at the police barricades as the Zeta's made their move towards the cathedral, where they could outflank the Sinola boys position. The Police fell back to pull them into the square hoping they can put a counter offensive on them when they came into the square. The problem of course that citizens were fleeing towards the Cathedral fleeing the gunfire and Explosions. Fredrick hit the stop button on his recorder and he turned to his Mexican guide Rafael. “Are they really going to let the people get killed there?” Rafael looked at him somberly. “Senor, the Mexican authorities can barely protect themselves in this part of Mexico. They can stop the cartel soldiers or they can protect the citizens but they can't do both.” His American Guide Juan pointed to some other buildings. “Over there are the Mexican military sniper positions. They might be able to provide the people some cover, but I don't think that will be much. They are in god's hands now.” Fredrick clenched his recorder tight in his hand, he knew more thoughts would flow to him as things started to go more sideways.The Sinola boys were on the move as well. Half of their force was moving to cut off the Zetas as the other half was moving towards the Cathedral square. This would pin the police and military between the Zetas and the Sinola boys, and pin the Zetas between the Sinola boys and the police. The Gunfire began to pick up and a woman and her child are stuck in the crossfire. The woman shielding her 7 year old daughter in her arms. A few flesh wounds hit the woman. She remained silent holding her child as she screamed. On the steps of the Church the older child of the woman cried out. “Mami” as several people tried to pull the child back into the church. Fredrick popped his recorder to remind himself later to clip these photos. He felt a little ghoulish but he knew their deaths could bring the attention of others. If they die their death won't be in vain. A tall man with sandy blond hair approached the boy. He appeared to be one of the priests. The boy and the people talking to him moved back into the cathedral and the priest stood at the doorway. The Priest didn't stand out when you first looked at him from a distance. But his actions stood out more then his appearance. “What is the priest trying to do?” Fredrick asked as his guides watched from their position. “Something crazy.” Juan said matter of factly. “Definately loco.” Rafael agreed. The priest took a stance like a runner preparing to start a marathon. As a bullet from one of the sniper positions went off he bolted towards the woman and her child. “Padre is fast” Juan said. As he made a sprint worthy of an Olympic athlete and did so seemingly effortlessly. His body mechanics were almost perfect and his garb, the garb of a monk, hid what seemed to be a strong musculature. However as he made half the distance up the mother took a serious bullet wound to the head. Her maternal instinct clutching the child even as her live was draining from her. The Padre clutched the hand of the dying woman and whispered in her ear. Fredrick half thought the priest was going to give her the last rights then and there. As he spoke to her she loosened her body and he moved to the small child and whispered in her ear. The Padre took the child and shielded her as best he could from the directions where fire was coming from. Rafael muttered to himself in Spanish. “Madre de dios. The crazy bastard is going to actually do it.” Juan and Fredrick took to chanting a mantra together. “Come on, you can do it. You can get the kid. You can do it.” The priest makes it to the edge of the stairs of the Cathedral. He spoke to the child. “Can you guys make out what he is saying?” Rafael made adjustments to his camera and Juan tried to find the directional microphone. As they were searching the priest took two AK shots to the kidney region, and then a 3rd bullet towards the side of the neck. The little girl took a burst of speed as she made her way quickly up the steps. The doors open up for her as the priest falls to the stairs. Smoke grenades and flash bangs move into the field as the Mexican Military moves troops in. “Well at least the priest didn't die in vain.” Fredrick says. The battle picked up and the Mexican police and military push back the cartel forces for both cartels. “Well, it looks like this battle might be going the way of the 'good guys'.” Juan comments seeing the change in the conditions. “Of the good enough guys.” Rafael quickly reminds him. Fredrick looks at his guides “Do you think the Mexican government would mind my interviewing some of the people in the Cathedral?” Rafael smiles “They probably would but I think we can get to them here shortly and hear what they have to say about all of this.” Rafael was a patriot, a man who loved his nation. But the love in his heart had turned to pain. Watching corrupt judges, police officials, narcotics officials, and military officials slowly allowing the country to rot. People taking the path of least resistance of apathy towards the cartels on their best day. With many people, far to many, silently collaborating with the Cartels murder of their nation. He said he quit about the corruption that he saw but the truth of the matter was he was tired. He was tired of being part of an isolated few who were standing up against a horde of forces bent on destroying his nation. His soul and heart couldn't take standing and fighting anymore. Juan largely had a similar story. Juan worked with the Border Patrol and local law enforcement on the US side trying to get word up the chain to their superiors about what was going on. He and Rafael and their colleagues on both sides of the border would from time to time get together and swap information. While Rafael was tired of the fight, Juan left out of humiliation. That the friends he made who he helped fight the evil men were being aided by his own government. Fredrick joined them out of a sense of betrayal. He was a young reporter whose mind embraced the ideas of “Fundamental Transformation of America.” He was attracted to the romance of what he represented, and the romance of the kind of change he set himself up as the harbinger of. He was a young freelance journalist and part time script writer in Los Angeles. He went to work for the Obama campaign early on. He organized people to vote , call, and donate for the campaign. He organized and trained phone bank workers, and staffers in local field offices. He was a true believer in the man who would change the country and maybe the world. Unlike many in the media he became fascinated by the story but as he went deeper he found more questions that the answers his friends in the administration gave him became more and more unsatisfying. He had put himself under the banner of a good and honorable man, who seems to have poured gasoline on this mess. What he was able to find out in Washington and along the border on the US side wasn't enough to give him a grasp of the story. And the fact his former friends gave him a cold shoulder on his best day. Other days they whispered about how he had “changed” and was brainwashed by the “smears and lies.” but as a reporter he had a nose for a story. He had a bit of an obsession that drove him to look for the truth no matter what. But now that he came to Mexico looking for another answer to the story. But now he found another story and it caught his mind. An act of human self sacrifice and heroism. An idea that would capture the minds of everyone in the United States and would help rally opinion on the issue. Some times we lose track of real heroism and focus on the fancy and shiny heroism of the famous and the glamorous. They went down to the building as the police and military were cleaning things up. Fredrick asked some minimal questions. The soldiers and police were as helpful as they could be before they directed him to the public information officers. The public information officers presented the packaged themes of good intelligence and better technology winning the day. Fredrick asked some questions about where the weapons came from and the police were rather uncomfortable. “Off the Record” he was told most of the weapons came from Colombia and its civil war, and some of the weapons came from Venezuela. The government didn't like to focus on that politically. One of the officers from the military was more blunt. “The government is more interested in attacking the United States in those areas we can. It plays a game that fools the people into supporting a lot of nonsense our government does.” The Mexican police pointed to the weapons they suspected might have come from the united states but they wouldn't be sure until they evaluated it later if they would send it off to the FBI for verification. The truth was of course that this was a bloody war fought against bloodier men and they got very lucky. This was the work he needed to do before they would let him go to the church where the heart of his story was. The head of the story is still to be determined. The son identified himself as Jesus. Rafael translated for him. “What did the priest say to you?” The boy thought for a moment and spoke to Rafael who translated for him. “He said I won't let your sister die. And I will do all in my power to save your mother. You need to be strong.” Fredrick nodded “Was that all?” the boy shook his head. “He said 'the barbarians have breached the gate.' and then he said 'Rome may fall, but we can rebuild it. But to rebuild it we must rebuild ourselves.' And then he motioned for me to go back into the church.” Fredrick spoke to the people who were there and they largely recounted the same story the boy told him. As they corroborated the story they began to provide additional details about the monk. The monk had a happen for saying things that were out of place. He was; French or spoke Spanish with a french accent, He was a Dominican friar, and he never seemed to have actual duties at the church that anyone could remember. His name was Charles some recounted, and he once joked when discussing the history of France that his last name was Talleyrand with one of the children he mentored. As Fredrick moved to the other brother monks none seemed to know much about him. The priest however knew a bit more. “Some in the priesthood take a different take on the Cartels. They view the cartels as a serpent leading many of our flock astray. Brother Charles shared that perspective. And he worked to build ties with people in the community. People who had character, dignity, and respect. People who would inspire others. He was trying to bring them over to the view that they needed to help rebuild the heart of our community. Be lights to guide others. I cannot speak to how successful he was but it seemed to be the calling he worked on. And I am sympathetic to their view, and I was more sympathetic to Brother Charles' approach. So I largely turned a blind eye to what he was doing.” The sisters at the church largely recounted the Priest's story. The Deacon, who was Brother Charles' confessor, maintained the seal of confession but commented further on the mysterious figure. “He was burdened. I suspect he joined the priesthood to avoid some burden. And it made his duties as a priest more difficult for him. The Deacon however noted when he had the privilege of Brother Charles' cooking his food was very often French in origin, or western Mediterranean. And Brother Charles could cook decent middle eastern and Greek food when asked to. The Deacon then paused for a moment. “My sense also was that he wasn't born catholic. Their were so many little things he said and did that made me wonder if he was a convert. Just little things he did right but it was clear that he didn't have the rote experience of it a born catholic did. He was always conservative in talking about details of his past and where he came from.” Last Fredrick went to interview the little girl. The one who saw the priest last. She had a blanket around her and was sitting alone. “Can we talk to you about what happened.” The little girl nodded affirmatively. “What can you tell us about the monk?” She shook her head. The translation came clear. “He wasn't a monk, he was a Angel.” Fredrick bit his lip taking a deep breath. He was frustrated the little girl may have nothing useful to ad, but he also agreed with her opinion. “What do you mean?” She turned her head and looked up at the stained glass window. “Did you see his body?” Fredrick shook his head. “You asked about him with the police. So where is the body?” Fredrick looked at the little girl curiously. “I saw it out of the corner of my eye as we went into the church. He was shot. I heard the bullets hit. I felt the shock as his body was hit. But he had no wounds. He had no blood on me. And as we went into the church before the smoke and bright lights and noise came, he moved.” Rafael shook his head. He thought the little girl was in shock and imagined this story. The little girl had both innocence and certainty in her mind of the divine and supernatural nature of the monk. But for the American reporter he was running an investigation based on facts to find the truth of the moment. They got some take out food from Laredo and a 6 pack of beers each. An American in Mexico eating take out Italian food with a Mexican and American former law enforcement officer eating a pizza. They had to go over the tapes and begin the work of assembling the story of what they saw and what they witnessed. Putting order to the bloody chaos that happened earlier that day. But as they returned to the hotel they began to review their video tape and were struck by what they didn't find. “Look, this is insane. He was shot and before the Flash Bangs and smoke grenades he was down. When the dust cleared he is gone. Cops were the only ones near him, and they didn't take him.” Juan says stunned at the video he saw. Rafael laughs “Hey Fred, maybe the little girl was right and this guy was an angel.” Fredrick laughs. “Well that's about as good an excuse as any at this point.” Fredrick was haunted more by the fact that the little girl said he had no blood and no wounds. This was beyond the miracles that Fredrick had read about in most journalism reporting. Even by the standards of old testament miracles this was a little unusual. Fredrick wasn't much of a man for believing in religion, but he was a excellent student of religion. When your writing stories in the newspaper, your using many of the same themes to communicate with your audience. It was almost sacramental in its nature like a form of catechism. As he begins to write the story he neglects to go into further details about the mysterious priest. He tried to track information about his identity and what records the church and Mexican authorities had they were very helpful but they lead to dead ends. He found evidence of him in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti, Panama, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. But no one knew when this priest who spoke Spanish with a french accent showed up. Most trails he could trace back further dead ended in Haiti with no person in living memory who could verify something else. Brother Charles also left few images to be found. It took a while for him to find a old yearbook photo from a catholic school in haiti. He sat on that photo for a while, as the story of the priest who seemed to rise from the dead left his conscious mind and faded into his subconscious like a bur attacked to the skin and painful. Fredrick watched that section of the digital recording over and over again on a DVD he printed. The bur didn't just attack at his mind it became an obsession. This would be how his quest for the truth began in his reporting. That little bur in the back of his head rolling back and forth irritating his mind and redirecting his thoughts. Peyton Bonn was the editor at the Daily Beast who evaluated foreign news stories for Newsweek and The Daily Beast Website. He was also a big fan of Fredrick's work. He gave him the big check for his Mexico explorations. “This is good stuff. So are you going to try to write a book about your Mexico experiences? I think that would be pretty topical and we would be happy to promote it is you did that.” Fredrick took off his glasses and fiddled with them. His lanky frame and soft skin gave him a certain boyish charm, but in his eyes there was a definite sadness and darkness that has been growing. “Do you know anyone? If I had a good enough advance I had some loose ends I would like to look into. I could make a really good book I think out of all of that. Peyton smiled and grasped him by the hand. “I know some people over and Simon and Shuster. Call over there and ask for Jack Lieber, he is a friend of mine and I think this would be up his alley.” Fredrick felt better upon hearing those words. Beyond his strange miracle at Nuevo Laredo he still had many loose ends on his mind. A book could help him purge those elements from his mind. “Oh, you mentioned you had a picture you were trying to track down information about this story from?” Peyton said as he started to pull up a web browser. “Yeah, it was a priest. He died in one of the incidents of cartel violence. Well...he was a monk, I am not sure with the way he died his title meant that much to God.” Fredrick fumbled to look for the picture of Brother Charles. Peyton sketched out a URL and a password and login name on a pad of paper. “I am demoing a search engine right now. Its in very much Alpha testing right now. What it does is it uses the markers on the picture to try to find other examples of the image. Now keep in mind everyone has doppelgangers but it might help you with tying up that lose end.” The shame of it all was that Fredrick didn't find a doppelganger. II. The Spring Loose End Fredrick Mann didn't know the name of the place he was on the outskirts of Tunis. His guide gave him a name to the town but he half forgot it as he held the 9 mm in his hand. 6 months ago Fredrick would be called a reasonable man by anyone. He was a very successful journalist making the circuit of talk radio and television talking about the horrible cartel violence in Mexico. Everything was going well and he was building up a serious success. He was working on a book to put all those experiences together. He was a guy who donated to the Brady campaign so the notion of owning a firearm would have been absurd to him. 6 months ago was like several lifetimes. He began getting worse and worse insomnia as this obsession filled him. The insomnia lead into headaches, and the headaches lead to an anxious drumming in his head. “If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.” he said slowly breathing deeply. He didn't believe Brother Charles was the Buddha, but truth be told even that wouldn't surprise him at this point. He even laughed and wondered if he might have been the wandering jew. But the truth of the matter was the irony of the wandering jew hiding as a catholic monk probably was to sweet to be true. It started with that search tool and it found two images of Brother Charles. One from a digitized image of a old Columbia football team. Another was taken during the Boxer Rebellion of a French Foreign legion unit. As he researched the unit he found out about one of the legends of the Unit. “The Iron Sergeant” or “The Bullet proof soldier.” The name he used was Hugo Victor, though that name likely deemed to be a false identity for an American soldier seeking anonymity in the Foreign Legion. And as far as aliases went it was a terrible one. Victor Hugo backwards? He wondered if he was some kind of Jean Valljean, that would be a sort of amusing story. It seemed almost phony by its nature. The sources were all quite clear on the fact he was an American. These stories were on a website of a French Anthropologist who recorded the legends and folk stories of the Foreign Legion. Fredrick remembers the moment he made the call. He put “Take It So Hard” by Keith Richards on his I-Pod. He took a deep breath trying to calm himself and focus himself. This all seemed so crazy. “Hello, is this professor Dupree?” he hesitantly spoke into the phone in an awkward french he clearly hadn't spoken since High School. Professor Dupree responded in clear English “ I don't get the privilege to speak to Americans often, would you prefer to do this in English?” Fredrick laughed. “Yes please, I would like to do that very much.” The professor clicked through his computer looking for the email. “So Mr. Mann, how may I be of assistance for you today?” Fredrick cut quickly to the chase. “The Iron Sergeant. I was curious about the legend. I found a curious tie in to something else I am researching.” Professor Dupree laughed. “The legend is of an American, he came from Montana or maybe Kansas. No one is quite sure. He was a man of vitality and youth who had served in the legion some 20 years and those he served with said he hadn't aged a day. What campaigns he fought for before the first world war are debated. But on at least 3 separate occasions witnesses claimed he took a fatal gunshot and did not die. Despite his protestations to his commanders. Even among some of the German soldiers of the time he was spoken of. His bravado and humility in battle inspired many men. His unit was, according to the legends, one of the most highly decorated of the war because of his inspiration to their espirit de corps.” The professor laughed “Some of the veterans of the first world war who served in the French Resistance and the Free French Forces claimed that he made his way back into France through spain and headed into Germany during the war. Others are rumored to have seen him during the Spanish civil war, but I have my doubts about that as he fought on the side of Franco. Such a character you would think would have been on the republican side. I do wish I had an opportunity to speak to the witnesses who knew him who were involved. All of the men who did so died years ago. Its a pity that I was only able to create an anthology of their stories after the fact from people who heard them. So tell me what brought this interest on?” Fredrick very softly spoke his next question. “Is it possible he had any kids.” Professor Dupree slipped into French “Mais non” he moved into English. “He was rumored to be celibate by his fellow soldiers, some thought he might be gay but I don't know if any of those sources were overly convincing.” He had less luck tracking the line back at the Columbia university archives. Their historian said simply “He was the Fullback on the 1889 squad. That was when American Football and Australian Rules Football weren't that different from each other. It might take a while for me to track down a name.” Fredrick did find a name in a few old newspaper clippings. Ulysses Roger Benton who was the son of Professor Jonathan Thaddeus Benton who was a Researcher first at the University of California at Berkeley and then became one of the founders of the Biology and Chemistry departments of the University of Colorado. Some one who when the boom of science came in the 20th century became a forgotten figure in both universities annals of their history. Most official mentions of Professor Benton after the mid 1890s neglected to mention a son as did his obituary. In 1920 there was a refurbishing of the crypt for Professor Benton and his wife. Their wasn't any records available as to who paid for that. His mind was caught with crazy thoughts. He saw evidence of a bullet proof man, and saw implied evidence of another. The men would possibly be great grandfather and grandson. This was of course until the crushing pressure of math began to set into his head. In 1889 he looked the part of a college freshman or sophomore however in the picture from Armistice Day almost 3 decades later he looks to have maybe aged 5 years. Now almost a century later the man he knew as Brother Charles looks at best another 5 years older. The accounts of those former war comrades who saw him enter Europe in WWII all commented that he hadn't aged much if at all since they last saw him. He was caught by a notion that would have made no sense in his mind before this day. He came to believe as did most rational people a gunshot from an AK 47 to the neck and near the region of the kidneys would be a sentence of death. He now has been presented with the possibility that for one man that may not be so. He was further challenged now to find that another man who looked to be his twin but for a few more years of age was also bullet proof and was shot definitively with bullets with lethal accuracy at least a century ago. For this to be a series of coincidences it would have to be an amazing series of coincidences. Is an immortal man or nearly immortal man anything more absurd then a man who was immune to bullets. Which fit under Occam's razor based on what he had before him: That there are 2 nearly identical bullet proof men, or just one. To his mind the answer became clear. The bigger problem came to him with what to do with these clues that hardly proved anything. Could he go down to the conspiracy theory circuit? Could he ruin his career and become a laughing stock? I am sure Alex Jones or at least George Noory would give him an excellent review of whatever he wrote. Was that worth it to know if an Immortal man was real, and with all the possibility that implied. If their was one man, where their others? Where did they come from? Are they gods? Are they aliens? Why are they unknown to the world? Will they deplete our precious bodily fluids? He laughed as he remembered the line from Dr. Strangelove. He laughed as he realized he was crossing a line from mere absurdity into absolute insanity. Fredrick was reminded of his days in college and looking at pictures of Napoleon on his white horse, George Washington ascending into heaven, and Socialist Realism covering so many communist leaders. Men being given in art what this man had on his own seemingly from birth. He still had his manuscript to work on but he needed a break from the Iron Sergeant and this obsession he had developed over him and the strange priest he saw in Nuevo Laredo. As he was working on his mexico manuscript haunted by the prospect of a man who could not die, his publisher called him with an offer. Go to Tunisia and take a look into some of the violence that had begun to spring up there and make a report on it. A lot of the news stories were focusing on the popular uprisings there and the changes to a more democratic political order. But Fredrick was already getting a reputation for finding that little thing on the outer edge of the story that might cause the whole thing to change.There he started to collect details on a non profit school that was funded by a mix of western and non western charitable sources that was financed by a Mr. Clark Donner. Clark Donner was said to be a Canadian importer who put much of his own personal finance and more of his personal charm into getting the donations. In the great stories of Thomas Friedman and his flat world guys like Mr. Donner were the hero. What made Mr. Donner an even bigger hero was his anonymity and humility in his work. Fredrick felt a positive sense around the story. It reminded him of the priest, a man who was making positive change but was in the background noise of the world. A man who empowered others to bring positive changes into their own lives.The principal of the school in a devilish English said “Mr Donner very much believes as Socrates and Plato did the key to getting a nation on the right path starts through its children. “ The principal had never met Mr. Donner, a man she said was a recluse who lived in the outskirts of Tunisia, but he was a great man. A lot of emails and a lot of use of social networking to promote and work together. He was trying she said to finance similar schools in Egypt to take advantage of the revolutionary changes there. As he was going about the school there he saw a picture of the ground breaking. In the background was Mr. Donner, a man to whom Mr. Mann was familiar with. “Once is a fluke, twice a coincidence, but three times is a trend.” Fredrick said to himself as he left the school. He sent in to his editor his article about the school that was giving children the space to try and find what a free, open, and Islamic society would be. But there he was, a man who avoided pictures so well left him with enough bread crumbs to trace him down. The truth of this story wasn't something that could come with the bits of evidence he had. He needed to go deeper and more gonzo into the story. Fredrick went to speak with one of his sources who had worked for the prior regime. “Do you know anything about Donner?” The Col. Responded curtly “We thought he was Canadian intelligence or some sort of American or Australian intelligence. But we were never able to track down what he was doing” Fredrick nods for a moment. “I need a firearm.” Fredrick said matter of factly. The former police colonel was stunned by the statement. “This is a difficult proposition to do even with matters in flux why is that?” He lied to the former police official. “ I have been investigating a source and I am afraid if I go deeper he might kill me. And the only way I can get close to him is to do it without any protection from a body guard.” The colonel soberly remarked “ Aren't you some kind of hippie? Have you ever shot a gun?” Fredrick said as the plan came to fruition in his mind “If I need to fire this gun, I won't have to worry about accuracy all that much.” The col. Was suspicious “If Donner is what I think he is you may end up dead if this gun play goes badly.” Fredrick laughs “If he is what I think he is you may also be right my friend.” He wondered a bit about this plan as it came into his head. While it had been a while this man was a soldier at one time. It was crazy to think that this idea would work. He could stop me. Fredrick went to his car shortly after he got his gun. And this brought him back to the car. It took a little bit of time to track down where Mr. Donner lived. The house blended in to the neighborhood and you would hardly expect a person of means to live there in hiding in Tunisia. It didn't have any attenaes or satellite dishes which was the only thing that was noteworthy about the house. He took a long breath as he went over his options. “I could ask him, and he could lie to me. I could ask him, and he could tell me the truth, or I can know the truth without any doubt.” He repeated this to himself several times. His mind was disturbed and he struggled hard with his respiration. “If I am right I will know something that is impossible, but if I am wrong I will murder a man. I will murder a man and if I am caught I will be executed. Well executed if I was lucky, I might just be killed by an angry mob. I will have murdered a good man of noble aim and noble purpose.” At this point in time he had already committed time and resources to this obsession, and if he does not stop it he will never be free from it. What he was thinking of doing was absolutely insane, an act of a deranged mind, but if he is right something more deeply disturbing is going on in the world. “I have to know the truth, no matter what.” he said to himself. The door was of exceptionally poor quality. Picking the lock was actually a lot simpler then he was told it would be due to the poor quality of the lock. He wondered if this was the man he was seeking with such poor quality security protecting him and his person. His mentor as a reporter taught him some rudimentary burglary skills. “Some times you need to bust into a locked office or filing cabinet to get the story” he told him. He remembered when he left journalism school he lacked a real understanding of the main purpose in journalism. Its about facilitating information and moving it from one place to another. The problem is knowing which information you needed to move. Its about taking the information and bringing it to the public in a story they can consume. Fredrick at the time was aghast at such a violation of journalistic ethics at the time. Now he understood the hunger to get to the truth at any cost that made this knowledge vital. His hands were calm as he picked the lock and opened up the door. He left tool marks on the door and as he walked into the house his conscious sane mind kept reminding him of this. He made his way through the kitchen, down the hall, and to the bedroom where “Hugo” was sleeping. He was about to fire the gun before he put in his ear plugs. He extended his arms out and placed the gun barrel to his temples. His hands were shaking and trembling. If he was wrong this would be the first man he killed with the first shot of his gun. He mouths to himself “Please god, don't let me be wrong.” The shot fired out, and a second one from elsewhere in the Tunisian night fired off. The mushroomed remains of the bullet hit the side of the pillow and Hugo pulled out a knife and quickly brought it to the throat of Fredrick pinning him against the wall. The gun was trailing off the smoke from its discharge. “I knew that you didn't die in Mexico, I was right.” Fredrick looked wildly into the eyes of the man he just shot. “Hugo” pulled back his knife. “You were in Nuevo Laredo? Fuck!” He took the knife back and loosened the pressure on Fredrick as he dropped to his knees knowing that while he might die later he is not going to die today. III. Man meets Superman “Do you normally go around shooting people?” The Iron Sergeant turned to his guest as he lead him into the kitchen. “No” Fredrick meekly replied. “I kind of went a little nuts. A bullet proof man who is immortal.” He paused and did a sharp turn to look him in the eye. “What do you know?” Fredrick started to talk. “I know your father was one of the founding Scientists at The University of Colorado, and I know you played fullback at Columbia. Well I know that for a fact now. There was a possibility you were another person who just happened to be immortal and indestructible. But the look in your eyes gives me the certainty that you are Ulysses Benton. “ He sighed “ Somehow I don't think I could lie to you that I am one of a secret race of indestructible men. Just tell me did you find me on the internet?” Fredrick pensively sat down in the kitchen “ Partially yes sir.” Hugo cursed in arabic, Fredrick knew it was arabic and by the way he was expressing himself it was a clearly not the sort of words spoken in polite company. Hugo quickly snatched the firearm and put it on a shelf in the kitchen. The Iron Sergeant starts to make a Turkish coffee on his oven. “Call me Hugo, I have had a lot of names over the years but Ulysses died a while ago metaphorically. I really shouldn't be surprised you shot me. When people find out what I am it usually leads to something bad happening. I would make you a Cuban coffee or a capachino but I don't have the tools for it here. “ Fredrick perks up. “But you inspired your unit in World War I to heroism.” Hugo chuckled “Despite what Woodrow Wilson lead people to believe we weren't fighting to make the world safe for democracy or any other noble goal. It was one team of Imperial powers trying to assert their imperial view of the world on another group. President Wilson learned that the hard way at the diplomacy table. I fought because I was good at it, and unlike other wars the French had me fight against these was against the best soldiers and the best weapons possible.” Fredrick's brow furrowed. But Hugo continued “If the Frenchmen took from my service inspiration and that allowed them to live and be successful there is something good that came of it. But people who followed me aren't as indestructible as I am. They died because that’s what every other man in the world does. I live on, but I am trying to hide from the world so I don't consume anyone else in my wake. The problem comes when you get deep down about it that you question if something your doing is for your sense of right or wrong... or just some civilization paternalism.” Fredrick paused for a moment before he spoke again. “I have to ask are you the Wandering Jew?” Hugo laughed. “No I am not anything more legendary then you have found me out to be. I have not been cursed by god, but I have cursed at him a whole lot. And god didn't seem to mind anymore then he would if you cursed him.” He paused for a moment looking at the coffee “ Well, I do think god is there in the background. Every so often I hear the soft quiet voice....I am just not sure I believe that its god anymore, and I just wish it is my own subconscious mind. He poured the Coffee out “I've made a major effort to hide from the eyes of the world. You've found me in the middle east and Latin America, but I’ve been elsewhere in my time. So what do I need to do to have you forget about me and forget about me and tell me what I need to know about how you found me?” Fredrick took a long sigh. “Why do you want to hide from the world? You've made a serious effort on making the lives of those people in Nuevo Laredo better and the people here in Tunisia better, why wouldn't you want to inspire people and be a leader. “ Hugo laughed “ I've been there and done that. My skills at trying to apply some of the wisdom of living a century took a lot of failures to get what I have been able to do now. And I don't even know if these acorns are going to build mighty oaks just yet. I don't even know if its to late for me to plant these trees. But I've seen the world at this cross roads before. If we can be turned back from it people need to be inspired to try. And the world is interconnected, there is a homeostatic flow in the material, political, social, and economic continuum. And where it backs up its like some kind of tainted sewer” Fredrick passionately slammed his fists into the table “That’s what I mean, why don't you inspire them on a larger scale. You can clean this all up and make the system flow right.” Hugo rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You remind me of a friend of mine. Its people like you and Edgar that made me turn my back on the world. You aren't ready. I have had 100 years and quite frankly I am not sure I am ready. I got to see in 40 years the coming of the ultimate forms of human power that dominate the world today. And I barely understand it today, I am not sure its something that anyone can truly understand. I was taught by my mother and my experience as a soldier for being covert about things. The problem is that eventually everything goes bad. Old fruits and veggies in the fridge eventually decay and rot. Civilization and human orders are no different. And I don't know if its time to clean the stench out or start over.“ He went to his refrigerator and went to grab some eggs and cheese. “Ready for what?” He didn't turn around as Fredrick begun to talk. “Well I think you need a good breakfast. I find that when I shot my first man I was rather hungry. However I think you were asking about what I said you weren't ready for. The notion of an immortal man made you want to test his immortality the hard way. I am not sure I need to go into further detail about how you are not ready.” Fredrick lit up his unfiltered Camel “I am kind of lost here, there is just so much that is going on I think I need to hear it all from the beginning. I think that’s the only way to understand this all, to make sense of any of it. If your saying god or the devil didn't do this I am not sure what your saying. Are you some kind of demigod or something?” Hugo laughed. “You are quite lost, but then so am I. We are all lost. So your saying we shouldn't beginning the story in the middle or end of the story? And its nothing so melodramatic or cliché. That’s not how this story begins.” He began to cut some vegetables and mushrooms in with the eggs. “The truth of the matter is I am not sure I know how the story actually began. I am pretty sure based on what I have seen that God or Gods haven't been involved in this story being born. I can't say that is impossible but I have seen a lot and if there is a god I do think I would have seen his hand playing in things that way.All I can do is tell you what I know. I can do my best to explain to you why its better for you and the rest of the world to forget about me and give me my peace.” And so Hugo began his story. IV. The Creation's Story “My father came of age during the Civil War. His father had some money and means back east. But he went into the war. My father was inspired by President Lincoln and the notion of abolition. The idea to him of men being held as slaves was morally abhorrent. And he felt the notion of a region dependent on agriculture rather then developing with industry was an anathema to him. His family came from Connecticut but I didn't really know that much about them beyond my grandfather was a man of some means. My father's father from what he told me was willing to pay to keep him out of the war. He didn't realize that his son was such an abolitionist. After the war where my Father had earned some distinction he used some of his family money to study the natural sciences and eventually earned his PHD. He marred my mother and she came from Norway or Denmark. I wish I remember which old country my mother comes from. I think that was part of why I never really knew my father's parents. I think they found the notion of their son marrying an immigrant rather disgraceful. Mom never talked much about her parents back in the old country. I take it she didn't think much of her family back there. She was a cold woman but had a strong nature. He got a job working as a researcher for Berkeley. He would get information on animals and nature in the wilds of Colorado and did studies about the nature and animals and the like. It was during this period he came up with the formula.” “My father told me several stories about where the formula came from. Spider venom, a bunch of pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo about alkalines, and other stories. I remember vaguely the air ships they saw at the end of the 19th century and I wondered if it was something from people from outer space or maybe an ancient Chinese secret. I had some of his old notebooks but none of it made any sense. Maybe he found the secret ichor of the god's or some kind of demon in a pool in some cave somewhere. After a while I just decided it would be better to burn them then to have anyone figure out the truth of what it was. He seemed to know what was the key to making the formula work, but I couldn't make heads or tails out of it. Whatever it was I remember father talked about using the formula on insects first. He talked about how the insects naturally grew stronger and more virulent. He mixed venoms and vital fluids from the insects into the formula. It always seemed weird to me after I had some formal science classes in science about how unscientific the story my father told me was. But then much of what he told me happened when I was a kid so I suppose it could just be my memory of how he did it might be deficient. Then he found a Fox who was about to give birth and he trapped it and injected it with the formula. Only one Kit was born to the Fox. He named the Fox Ash. Though in his diary he would more often then not refer to it as “The Creation.” My father loved Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, but I think his view towards me and the fox makes me think he missed the point of the book. The fox grew faster and was to maturity quicker then was the norm. It was on the larger end of normal for a Fox in size. Father noted the Fox had an extra intellect to it and was for more curious then the norm for an animal. Unfortunately when you live in a rural area a faster, stronger, smarter fox means a lot of chickens and small fowl would die rather quickly. When he turned on my father's chickens he killed it with an Axe. The poor thing lost its fear of man because of the formula. That ultimately was its undoing. This was a story my mother told me when I was about 12 or 13. She felt I was old enough to know and I could understand what this would mean to my own life. I am not sure I could adequately explain what went through my father's mind to experiment with his unborn child and wife. But then Jack Kevorkian did an experiment on himself and several of his own friends with dead human blood. Their experiment nearly killed them. He however was from a more disturbed background based on the experiences of the Armenian genocide. So its hard to say what drove my father. If you have this belief in science and this belief about the ultimate rightness of your science to change human beings for the better the idea of killing yourself, your wife, or your unborn child probably isn't that difficult. I do remember my mother was quite angry with my father when she found out. She recounted this to me several times. But she said 'You will not be my Fox. And your father has already killed his fox.' My mother had a better understanding of human nature. And she also had a love for my father. She didn't want him to destroy two more lives in coming to find his great genius. She knew that a Stronger, Faster, Smarter human being would be feared by other men at some instinctive level. So she applied a good amount of Lutheran self denial to my childhood growing up. My father had this idealistic vision of science and he viewed my gifts similarly. He was posed with a thinking that any denial of such things was an absurd and small minded vision. From my own experience I find that my mother and father were both right. The strong, faster , and smarter man is more often then not feared. But my father was right as well. The power of a belief in a man or a thing could unite people and make them find new and interesting ways to be human. In the case of Germany in world war II and Stalinist, Maoist, or Juche related communist society they were more sinister ways of being men. And I also found that being a strong man didn't make you any more likely to be free of the wake of other strong men. But when I was growing up my nearest neighbor was a good 10-15 miles away. And I didn't go to the one room school house till I ran out of the ability of my mother and father to educate me. Which took some quite some time. It was about the same time I was working on my applications to colleges at the time. When I was growing up I spent more time alone in the woods. In the woods I can chase down wild animals, I could wrestle with bears, I could toss boulders around. I was unburdened by the restraints my mother taught me. I was free to use my exceptional abilities. Its fun trying to outrun a deer in the woods. As the deer looked at you with an inability to understand the strangeness before it. But truth be told I was hardly scientific or disciplined in my explorations of my abilities. But then what child is disciplined when he explored his own bodies. Beyond that and my limited schooling I spent a lot of time working what crops and animals we had. My mother had this idea and my father agreed with it. What little patience I learned and had at that point in time was tempered into me working on the farm we had. My father focused a lot when he was teaching me on foundational ideas, principles, and science. He focused a lot on his own notion of truth and order. He taught the hard sciences so that worked better I suppose. Mom when she taught me provided me some knowledge on how to read and write and on books. She taught me history and the more soft knowledge. The things where truth was more subjective. These things were truthfully more useful to me in much of my life then I would imagine they would have been for you. I was a creation more then I was a child. I would read stories of children and their families to get a better sense of expectations people had for me. And in ways I could exceed expectations enough to stand out and earn my fathers pride but not so much as to draw suspicion and condemnation. It helped me when I went to the school house learning to play with other children. I picked the times I needed to fail with them so they didn't know my secret. The problem with that was always feeling a sense of shame. That other people's glory belonged to me. That I had the greatness inside me. That was part of the struggle I had as a child. My father talked about me going to Berkeley but I was his creation more then I was his son. And even Frankenstein's creation went off to explore the world on his own as his own man. When the letter from Columbia came to our house I was rather ecstatic. I was no longer the farm boy and I was certainly free I thought of being the experiment that needed to be managed. My father was going to forbid me to go, and I stood up to my father for the first and only time in my life. “And what are you going to do, stop me?” A simple act of childhood rebellion against a parent but from me it was so much more. I was so stupid. When some one who could could knock a bear to the ground with a punch saying such words in my father popped the bubble of his optimism. Much as with Victor Frankenstein the creation was trying to put itself into the world. It was my mother who earned me his apathetic acceptance. My father rarely kept touch with me when I was away living in New York at the time. And I when I left New York lost my mother. It wasn't till the 1920s when I came home that I was able to find their graves and give them my respect. I had went to war and killed many men and had my person-hood crafted in a different crucible. I wondered if I was the man my parents wanted me to be at that time. I wonder if I was a normal son I could have been the kind of man they wanted me to be. At the end of the day that's one of those mysteries of my life. My father viewed me as his creation, and to my mother I was her cross to bare. The big city was a blur and my education was a blur to me and my experience at the university. My classes were not challenges to me. That is not to say my education as a metallurgist in the school of mines wasn't intellectually stimulating. I also minored in the classics which was also quite intellectually stimulating. But the classes seemed to just float by. I was able to demonstrate satisfactory proficiency but I was not excelling to the levels I think I could have. My superhuman abilities drove so much of my focus and drive. It took a lot for me to come to terms with that more fully, but that was something I never came to terms with in the class room. But their was something else new at the university I was able to excel at. Today Football is the king of all sports but this was the first decade of football. And I was a full back during a time when people got seriously injured in football. I was out of the game a decade when the President of the United States threatened to shut down the sport. I was able to loosen myself up and be free. I used my superior skills to dominate my opponents without providing to many injuries to my opponents. More often then not I was able to move faster then them and avoid their tackles. But the voice of my mother kept in the back of my head keeping me mindful. I was certainly fearful of being to aggressive and exposing myself to others. I remembered my mother telling me the story of the Fox and my father killing it. I remembered how he looked at me as I was leaving for school. I was free on the gridiron, but I kept myself tempered. That said I got my first taste of Glory. And I had to say that glory gave me something that diligent work in school never could. It filled something in me, it filled a craving in my heart. Though the physical challenge of football soon were not enough for me. Nor was the glory and status of being a big man on campus. I was also tempted with women. I felt so many women run their fingers through my hair. In the end though I was always vacant from them. I had to wonder about a future with children. Would I sire a race of demigods or even other gods. Would their be a new race of men we would give birth to. At the end of the day the most primal and animal fruits of glory were denied me. That’s not to say I didn't try to date them, I did. But the problems ran deeper. I knew in a accidental moment of anger I could hurt or kill them. I knew she was most likely going to die well before I did. These things really made me separate from them. But back then people didn't have as much of a secret life thing going on. Some folks did but most people were what they looked like on the surface. At the end of the day I couldn't relate to them. That’s more then the fear of what children would be like that kept me from women. I started hitting up At Shows. This was back when Professional Wrestling was less morality play and more athletic competition. After the first few I hit I became the wrestler that took all comers. I quickly learned how too work matches as a hooker after they sent 3 or 4 hookers after me. Wrestling was different then. This was before Gotch-Hackenschmidt. Matches were often shoots and were for other men up to the hands of fate. I won several good purses before returning on occasions to draw larger purses and larger crowds. There was something exhilarating in knowing that professional gamblers who planned for every constituency was going to be taken for all his money. A guy who made sure that every transaction wound up benefiting him and making him wealthy. I worked circuses and carnivals as strongman , and I was involved in various types of boxing matches. Bare knuckle boxing was my favorite type of Boxing. However I always made sure the matches ended quickly. I didn't want to look to free of abrasion and bruises back when I got such things. I also wanted to work the bookies so the gambling would earn me the biggest profit. Gambling was like the rush of running free in the woods to me. Only it wasn't a gamble to me. I didn't bet on team events. Betting on team events I was in felt wrong as it tainted the work of the others. I was cheating them. The only people I was cheating at the fight were the gamblers who didn't know that I wasn't going to lose. Ultimately that was my own undoing. This was very instructive for me in understanding greed however. So I had to go to far into vice to get a real sense of virtue. And in the depths of my fall another man died because of my carelessness. It was the moment when I killed a man for the first time and I can't remember his name. But as much as I wanted to end this quickly he wanted to last. I don't even remember what the bonus was for a man lasting 3 full rounds with me by he gave it everything he had. The longer it lasted the quicker I tried to end it. I thought I was pulling the punches enough but I remember the nook on his face when the hemorrhage hit his brain. This was barely sanctioned and the promoter never knew my real name. And he didn't know that I ducked out the back of the bar either. It was about a week later and their were no police officers or investigators coming for me. But I had more important things then law that came for me. I turned into that fox and murdered a chicken, It sounds kind of funny when you say that, but that’s what it was. There was no creator coming for me with an Axe.. There was no scolding mother. So was I a killer? You know what the answer I had? I didn't know the answer. But I needed a place like I had when I was kid. A place where I didn't have to worry . This sounds racist as hell but that place was Africa, the extremes of Asia. It was the places in the dawn of modernity where Imperialism came with a gun and a bayonet to bring civilization. The only question was how to get there. I dropped out of school and found my way to the docks. I worked on fishing boats and freighters. I heard stories from my father about the French Foreign Legion. Working on a boat was a world of extremes. You were trapped on the same place with the same people. If you didn't like a guy you would on a long enough boat trip have to deal with him for months. Making it across the Atlantic as help on a commercial vessel was hardly an enjoyable experience for most people. But when your a man who didn't tire, couldn't practically be hurt, and could lift several times his own body weight you became very popular. This gave me some extra money to do some extra gambling. Playing at cards however was not as good for me as gambling on games of skill. It was math and propability as well as learning the faces and actions of people. This was a great experience that helped me when I came to France and decided to join the Foreign Legion. Franco-Dahomean Wars were not particularly interesting wars. We had some interesting little bits of wars going out in africa and I got to see much of it. It reminded me a lot of my early wrestling matches. I was fighting people who were far from my equal and far from the equal of the french forces. Killing people on purpose was a very different matter then killing animals, or killing a man accidentally. However I knew I was quicker and harder to injure. I was tougher and faster, so the fear that an african tribesman with some rifles might kill me was the furthest thing from my mind at the time. They were hardly professional soldiers and I was in a professional and legendary army. I was a bit of a jerk with my certainty of my own strength the more seasoned soldiers didn't think much of me. I was later transferred to China to fight in the Boxer Rebellion. I was excited to see China and excited to test myself with a higher level of military challenge. The command transferred me to China I was with several Americans from the foreign legion going to China. It was nice to meet other Americans and here what was going on back in the country. I was wanting to go back home but the truth of the matter was, I was free in the fight, and I was free in war. But I was also in mediocrity. But what the Chinese had in the way of the military took things up to a new level. It gave him the next step in his quest for greater and greater challenges and innovation. This was the point where I began to get a sense of military tactics. The truth was I was becoming comfortable as a solider. I also have to admit that there was a comfort in being normal and fading into the background. But that was not to last ultimately. Like with football I learned to take a taste of glory, and take a taste of adulation. That small taste was not to last either. OH in china I became quite fascinated by the legends of the serum on immortality. I tried to see if I could recognize anything in it and in my fathers formula. But one mystery was more mysterious then the other. I also went to a traditional folk medicine practitioner and learned some of the basics of Qi Gong. I tried to see if he could see anything strange. All he said was I had the kind of vitality in me at a young age that great qi gong masters tried for their whole lives.” The eggs were finally done into a well formed omelet. The mix of peppers, unions, cheese, and lamb made a fine mixture. Fredrick took his first bites into the omelet. The strong coffee helped Fredrick take a focus on all that had come to his mind. The narrative of hugo's life was a lot to take in. “You don't talk like a historical throwback.” Fredrick commented as he was eating. “Time is relative. The more you have of it the faster it goes. The longer it is the more grounded you are in what you hold to. And I have never been stuck in the past. Its like when your a kid how a minute was long and then when your a adult the time for a minute slows down to a crawl. Some times for me the minutes and seconds are a blur of time. If anything my problem is being to stuck in the moment. Its taken me a while to cultivate the patience and perspective of an immortal, and I might end up dying some day. Then that would be disappointing. But I have more story to tell yet.” V.The war to end all wars When you were a soldier in those days you had two molds to fall into. The mold of Cincinatus resuming your plowing till the Republic needed you again, or the role of the idle weapon of war kept pacified with drink and routine. I was stationed in Tunisia during the time before the great war. It was during this time I took to learn Arabic and some of the local customs of the place. I also spent a lot of time cooking and learning to cook. When we were on base I would always work to trade with the cook in the mess hall. My boyish good look and charms were commented on by the French officers. A man who seemed not to age for a decade wasn't much of a big deal, but two was suspicious. A man who served in war and survived such challenges as you faced and didn't age either earned some resentment. I was thinking about leaving the legion but I was not sure what I could do to fill the drive for vocation I had in my heart. But I finally got to face the full scope of war. It was a war against a professional army with a trained legacy of soldiering. It was a world power fighting against another world power. The battles had meaning and had a real chance to apply change to the world. The orders from Paris moved in Foreign legion members who were from central powers states and moved the rest of us from North Africa to the thick of things. The guy who took over for me was a Hungarian. He regretted he couldn't join the fight because he and his family had hated the Hamburgs for generations. I was put in charge of a group of largely green legionaries. That was where the legend began. Up until this point I was largely lucky. I had the sense to be behind cover when I was being fired at. Or taking a superior position from the high ground. And you would think with trench warfare it was harder to get shot. But I got hit by a German sniper the witness who passed on the legend of the Iron Sergeant was a French Canadian. He joined the foreign legion because he had been disowned by his family, and the idea of fighting and dying for the English queen was against his moral character. When the bullet hit me I thought I was dead. I fell back into the trench the bullet shredded part of my shirt and my skin had a ever so slight burn on it and the remains of the bullet lay in the mud beside me. Its a shame that it was in the middle of the war zone because learning that your bullet proof is pretty darned exciting. Francois was able to hit the sniper with a grenade when he saw me get back. Francois didn't tell my story during report, because it was an insane story, but in the chow line the story got whispered again. But the idea of being bullet proof hit me like a ton of bricks. The trenches were a dark inhuman place. People became focused on survival which was a great challenge every day. But I knew I didn't have to fear bullet, gas, trench foot, or grenade. I wasn't willing to test my luck on mortars or heavier artillery. I didn't much want to test myself with Mustard Gas but that was the way events came to play themselves out. None of the Biological or Chemical agents did me any harm. This allowed me to be exceptionally heroic to my fellow soldiers.. But I think what made me so heroic is the fact I didn't think about heroism. I just thought about the moment and pushing forward with my body. The heroism was more what people read into me being free in the horrible place of death and dampness. This was different then my other times cutting loose. War in this gray dreary world made people see a lot of things and say a lot of things. But the truth that went down in the papers was entirely another. I hadn't been this free since my childhood. And I realized the power of an exemplar. I realized that the men around me were braver because even those who denied what they saw me do. The legend says we were a highly decorated unit, which was true, but we weren't the most decorated. But we had many more commendations then we had decorations. We also had a high rate of injuries and casualties. But I was in a place in the thick of things where I didn't think of it. I was the point of the spear and I loved it. It was how I got a whole lot of insight into being transcendental. People talk with romance in the war about Christmas truces or various forms of football or they talk about the nihilism of the trenches. But what I saw in it was something else. I didn't need to worry about killing or harming people. The Germans were just clucking chickens to me. But I wasn't a fox, I was a dog on some the chain of another master. At that time the challenge of the war took away much of my loathing for the french imperial footprint. I didn't get that the differences between a Dog, a Fox, and a Wolf in this grand metaphorical scheme were rather thin. But I was standing up for France and their imperial order. Not out of any sense that the Germanic imperial perspective was any better or worse. I didn't need to think in the war and I was just a big bold hero. That was the romance I was caught up in. And when the American's came this time it was very different. When the Europeans were just in the fighting it was the balance of power, but when the Americans came in the war was going to end. Victory became a new ambrosia to me different then glory. The war was winnable, and I could play a small part in winning the war. I fought harder, took bigger risks, and my men followed me into the maw of hell. When the war came to a close though I had learned the way to balance what my mother taught me and what my father taught me. People when inspired by a bold and powerful example could do amazing things. If they believed in something great they would do amazing things. That’s why when the war was over I stayed in Paris for the peace talks and peace conference. The truth is I went and was with my first woman. Why was I with a prostitute? My fear of making another like me at the end was worn away by my seeking out something else to fill the void in my life that came from losing the state of war. I survived gas,bayonet, bullet, and explosion. I was willing to take this risk. I was looking for an education that college never could give me. I took to observing the flow of politics on the larger scale. I looked at them to see if I could learn from them something about power. The first thing I learned was how short sighted people with real power were. Men who were trying to divide up the world amongst themselves. Foolish idealists who felt their beliefs were so pure that they would just inspire others. I was quickly dissatisfied with what I was learning. These men were also petty to people who gave them about as much as they got. It became clear to me that I needed to go home. I needed to see power on the streets of New York and Washington D.C. And I needed to see if I could find a way to use my power to make a change when I got home. I made it home in time for new years 1920. I had been away from the country for 30 years. I should have looked like a man in his late 40s but I looked no more then my 20s. Knowing your free from unnatural causes taking your life is one thing, but I came to realize I am free from the most natural cause of death possible. I looked to have aged a few years so I thought I had the possibility of growing old eventually. But all I have seen is that the hands of my internal clock have slowed down more as I grow older. The legal documentation I had from the French government was sufficient to help me return home. VI. No Love for a Prophet in his own hometown. “Once I got to New York I got back in touch with some friends. They told me about my father. He died a penniless professor. My mother passed on as well. I wept when I found their home and graves in disarray. The friends were quite shocked to see I had barely aged. I played the card that I was just lucky but I didn't want to go back to the well of these friends. They would start asking to many questions and would start looking at me suspiciously. I had some money that I had been investing before that point that I used to attend to those matters. The irony was my father died in debt. I ended up having to pay some of my fathers debts, but I couldn't do it as his son. At the time that burned me, but now in the fullness of time I learned to let that bit of my ego go free. But I did my part to try to put some repair to his name. He made me some thing that was not human but put me into a human world. I don't know why I felt the need to attend to his honor and name but I did. That was the point when I first started to change my identities so my seeming immortality could remain hidden.I decided to go back home to New York and find myself some honest work. Work that would give me a chance to feel the corroded artery of the city. As a war hero and calling a friend or two of my “father” allowed me to get a job in the bank as a loan officer. It gave me a chance to see people who were high and people who were low. And it gave me a chance to see people who were in desperate need. During the war I honed an ability to have a strong recall. It wasn't like a power that I had. It wasn't even like my intellect. It was something I learned when I put my focus on the fact I made choices where people lived and died by my words and deeds. That helped put your mind right and keep you focused. When I found people who were so desperate in need in their finances I went and watched them. I started to get to know what would cause people to fall into dire straights. And I would take time to learn about the criminals and vandals that would beset these people on their path. As I did this I would send tips to law enforcement and the media. At first I thought I was doing it to try to fight back against what was wrong. But more often then not it should me reporters who were just as wicked and as corrupt. I wasn't ready to act though. I did have to follow the trails further up the line to learn something about who was doing what to whom. And I began to learn a great deal. You should never blame on some one an act as a form of evil, unless you could prove it wasn't foolishness. You should never believe some one with malice who lacked any sense of discipline or sense. Your more likely to see some one act badly in foolishness then with forethought. Needless to say these extra circular activities lead to me holding down a few other jobs. I worked as a pi, a cop, a reporter, and a janitor among other things. The jobs were not my vocation though, they were tools for my vocation. I actually lost the job at the bank using my own powers. A robber had hit the bank and locked people in the branch in the safe. I was able to use my strength to crack the safe open. The cops believed I didn't do anything, but the bank President wasn't quite so sure. I took time to track down corrupt politicians but with all the studying and stalking I didn't know the first thing to do. When I was a reporter it was a bit easier. I wrote stories, but I wasn't very good at it. But I could always drop a dime on the people I found out to the better reporters. Exposing corruption and scandal and bringing the light of the sun on it. But I found out more often then not the reporters themselves were a bit corrupt. So I moved into radio reporting, which was pretty enjoyable but it was harder to roll out as good an information to the audience. What it came down to was I needed to act, and I needed to be able to push through and use my powers for more then just spying. I was in queens at the time. I hooked myself up with a up and comer who was hunting his way to become Queens borough president. He tossed some leads my way but I often brought better leads to him. I would make sure the press came in time to see others get disgraced. The first real thing of significance of course was the fact I came upon a member of the Jewish Mafia was coming after my patron. It took me a moment to find the people who were coming after him. They shot at me. In all this time hiding in the shadows I forgot how liberating it was to be shot at. I forgot how it helped give you a great deal of clarity in your mind. When he saw I was bullet proof he ran, but I was faster. I knocked him off the side of the building I lead him to. In those days the police would blame a mafia hit on just about any gangster falling off the side of the building. His cohort tried to drive off. I picked up the rear bumper as the car was moving. That damage was a bit more problematic. It was late enough at night I was able to push the car. I was able to dump that in Flushing bay. I actually tossed the car into the bay by hand. I hadn't realized it but as I had gotten tougher I had also gotten considerably stronger. I was able to lift and throw a car. That was actually more then a little disturbing to me. Once I told my patron what he did he used this to make a run for the office of District Attorney. This was going to be his start into making it into the system to change things. I was truly naive in this regard. He even loaned me out to congressmen in DC from time to time whose favor in the New York political machine game he was trying to earn. There were kickback scandals at the new Bureau of Veterans affairs. It was there that I began to learn the scope of things. I tracked down one of the contractors giving a kick back for a hospital in New York. This guy needed a little shacking down to be convinced to be forth coming. Then he of course became to forthcoming. He revealed that he was kicking back to the Bureau and he was paying protection to the mob. And the mob payments are part of why he had to end up continuing the circle of bribery himself. And of course this cleared another enemy of my patron. I began to get a real sense of what I was actually doing. It wasn't long before I saw what was happening. My patron was a young turk and I cleared those people in the old turks out and the servants of the old turks who were in his way. His problem was he got greedy. He pushed the Jewish mob on himself. This was to make him some sort of crime fighting maryter to the voters. But I didn't have to take him down. You see the biggest problem is the old saying is wrong: Power doesn't corrupt, greed does. People become corrupt if they are greedy and have no power. People who have power but no greed are ever corrupt. Greed is that short knife that puts itself to your back to push you forward. Eventually you slow down and the knife goes into your back. That’s when corruption gets you. And of course when you make your bones putting the knife to some one else even a super-man can't save you all the time. His greed eventually got the better of him. But by that point I had moved back to freelancing my campaign against the corruption of the country, but my heart wasn't in it. I wondered if I needed to leave home and travel the world again. If their were adventures in the world beyond that could warm the spark of my heart. I was lost and without purpose. I couldn't cut out the bad wounds. They just festered up again. But I could go into jungles and find new animals and find lost civilizations. There were still places to be explored. And so that was what I decided to do. I left about the time of the big crash. I think I might have been in Ulan Bator about that time. I had this idea maybe I could find the the tomb of Genghis Khan. “ Fredrick note a pause to put himself back into the Conversation. “This all sound rather boring.” he was kind of shocked at all of this. Hugo laughed. “Well, I need to get through this part of the story. Because all of these small setbacks were little bread crumbs to the ultimate lesson I learned in all of this about my own power. I could have told you about roughing up small thugs or busting up moonshiners. Or the ins and outs of how you get or plant info in closed in government operations. But that doesn't tell you the story. That and the fact of the matter is shaking down low people on the totem poll of the corruption. Shaking down little fish was trivial and rather boring.” VII. Ozymandius. The fork in the road came when I met Edgar Reif . He like you came to know what I was. And he handled it in some respects worse then you did. But he didn't need a gun to test out the nature of my immortality. The story of Edgar Reif starts before I came to Ulan Baator. Ungern-Sternberg was a warlord who had lead to Outer Mongolia becoming free from the Chinese. Edgar came there at an invitation of Ungern Khan to study the people and help provide them with a better education. He helped educate some of their people on eugenics which was a science of its day. As the Khan and his goons brutalized the people Edgar focused on improving the education of the people. I find myself amused that I have since adapted a similar methodology to improve the base foundations of a the people. We met In a library in Ulan baator where he was teaching a class in Introductory German to a small room of Mongolians. A White Russian soldier helped translate his lessons for the people. I barely spoke German but I could see learning a language through a translator probably left something to be desired. He had a strawberry blonde main of hair and a shrapnel scar across his left temple which he recognized from the war. He was happy to meet some one who poke passable German. Though what I learned in the war was a bit rusty. We both decided to speak in English because we were both conversant in that as a common language. And we had a common language of beer that we enjoyed, but the beer here in Mongolia lost something in translation but probably had less dysentery then the water. We talked about our experiences in the war. His perspective on war was a whole lot different then my own. He viewed war, conflict, and those sorts of struggles as part of man's quest to perfect himself. He viewed our social struggles as a people as all part of a quest for perfection that has brought man down from the trees. There was a romance to this notion that was happening in the middle of bloody torment of the Mongolian people first by a butcher and then by a horde of communists. And I looked in the hordes of peasants and I am not sure I saw them rising up from their struggles and pressures. Well we discussed the nature of Tibet and their Buddhism and we began to make a road trip through the rural areas of communist controlled China. He discussed with me this romantic and child like vision of evolution. But I turned to him and started to turn our conversations down the inevitable road to catharsis he brought me to. “But what will it mean if we reach a place where we not only can control evolution but we are beyond the challenges of this world.” It was the first time since my father I met a man who spoke with such pure passion and such vision. And about a vision that touches my own life. What he said I wept when he first said it to me. “If it happens it would be insufferable terror and horror to that first person. But as he would be beyond what other people are living he wouldn't know it was so very wrong.” but he spoke of the fact if their were to many people who could control and become such ubermensch alone in a nation of under men it would lead to much violence and struggle as the eventual victory of the evolved comes forward. If only my father gave me a serum that gave me a better sense on human nature. My mother tried to teach it to me, but at that point I was to enamored with my German friend to listen. He was also enamored with my physique, he would talk about it in terms of contemporary art and classical art of the physical form. This part of China also reminded me of my childhood. And it reminded me of the trenches. Their was so much empty space, so many wild places where a man could be himself without the hands of civilization touching him. I began to at that point develop a contrary philosophy on human nature. Trying to come to come to terms with human civilization from a non normal human perspective. I learned later the Japanese have two words, Tatemae and Honne, that have come to reflect on my view of human nature. To the Japanese it means what you pretend to believe and what you actually believe but I think the truth goes much deeper. We all come from the egg and we are struggling before we can communicate to become one thing. Its only later when we can communicate and when we build vital communications we become another thing based on our kith and kin, as well as the civilization around us. Some people focus more on the inner truth to try to resolve the tensions and some find a way to resolve their outer truth. And in my own life my inner truth defied any outer truth. I was a thing no one could know about, so all the outer truth in the world was a torment to me. At the time I wondered if this passion of Edgar's was a way for me to cross that barrier if maybe it could help me become more human. That’s what he brought to me and why I followed him to Tibet and further. But that fear of exposure was of course going to get me, it was going to rule this challenging introspection on my nature in the larger world. We came to a city with a Chinese Warlord who was quite enamored with the ability to speak English, German, and French with some people of European extraction. We took the opportunity to do some mountain hiking. I wasn't thinking about what could go wrong I was thinking about enjoying and living in the moment. It was a simple rock slide and I fell into a crevice. Edgar had the thoughts a normal person would have in that situation. Thoughts to get help for a friend who had an accident. But all the fall did was scuff and tear my clothes. This wasn't like the bullet. This wasn't like the people who spoke of me in hushed tones during the war. I would choose to end the mystery and I would choose to open up to one man. Its about trust. Without the trust their isn't the tragic part of the story. He was going down the mountain as fast and as prudently as he could go, and he was just a man and I was oh so much more. “ I can explain” I said, but we will have to go back to base camp, and probably drink some brandy.” I actually shot at his German unit. When we later recounted our battles he came to tell me it turns out I might have shot at him. He asked if I could have copies of my fathers notes. He started doing math to trying to figure out how if he could recreate the formula through breeding my line could replace the human race in total. This was the tone of conversation as we hit Llhasa and I pondered what I should do next. I spent some time alone in the temples of Llhasa and I spent time in solitude and reflection trying to find god as near as I can. I was trying to wrestle with the notion of 144,000 more of me and what that would really mean. The truth of the matter is I couldn't live this way, and I couldn't inflict that on others. I also knew that there would be no peace with Edgar if I didn't acquiesce . Edgar didn't know the extent of my abilities so I needed to stage my own death in a way that would be convincing. Thankfully their were various warlords in the region trying to subvert the self rule of the Tibetan people. All I needed was to pay a warlord a little cash to help me stage a kidnapping and then staging a small explosion in a weapons depot where he kept me prisoner. Then of course making sure I left bread crumbs for Edgar to see the explosion and the crater. The costliest part of the venture was paying to replace the munitions at 175% of the cost for his purchase. This was the first time I “died” so far as the world was concerned. I even arraigned for the legal paperwork to show my death. I took a cut south into India and then made my way to a British shipping vessel. I made my way from India to the United Kingdom and from the United Kingdom to Belize. I got off the boat there and tried to find my peace in the jungle. But I found I wasn't as alone as I thought. My father made a strong man who was fearful and cautious of his own power, but god himself had made strong men who were not that much different then I. Men with sinews crafted by the state, with muscles made of military power, and a preternatural ability to change and alter men. I tried to keep my mind off them and about the ways they were using things in the world. The truth is for all of my powers I was just one man, and what would I get by punching Hitler? Other then the satisfaction of punching Hitler. These dictators did not gain power by drinking some magic formula or getting some mystical boon. They gained it by industry and by organization. They came about it by painting a vision of the world and through the gravity of ideas bringing people in. And they made these ideas in a time of darkness when people needed some light of some sort. I think where my attempts failed is I didn't have a character for industry. I didn't have a charisma to bring people together. These were the same people who made the Pyramids in Belize. They build the great cathedrals and ruins around the world. I had to wonder if people were conditioned to such men leading them. And if they were what would it mean for a race of men like myself? I didn't have the answers then and I still didn't. But Edgar found another way to achieve those goals. Its the middle 1930s and I don't want to bore you with the stuff I am sure you remember from your history education. Edgar didn't just become a Nazi, he became an elite SS Nazi scientist who focused on the larger Eugenics agenda.